


People Like Us (We Gotta Stick Together)

by loperty



Series: The States of America [3]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: American Revolution, Canon-Typical Violence, Family Dynamics, Gen, Historical Hetalia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 16:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22498810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loperty/pseuds/loperty
Summary: It starts with a shot. Or rather, an escalation of violence. Or it starts with a royal decree; or rather the removal of a royal document. How it starts, however, is not the purpose of this anthology. It has started. It's a war now.It has happened before. It has never happened like this. One becomes three, becomes fourteen, (becomes one?). And that ends with a choice."I will be the last one left.”“How do you know that?”To Alfred, it is simple, there are no nations that are women. None. At least none of the powerful ones; Alfred can feel it in his bones, in his blood, he and his nation are destined to be powerful and great. So of course, out of him, Victoria, and Samantha, he would be the last one left.
Series: The States of America [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/209885
Kudos: 26





	1. Prologue: Change is Coming, It's Our Turn Now.

**Author's Note:**

> Main and Chapter Titles are from Kelly Clarkson's "People Like Us"

The notion of a nation has variable definitions; there are nations within the legal term, nations of people in the religious sense, and then there are the nations of identity. The latter has deeper levels of analysis that have had scholars busy for the past several hundred years. Traditionally referred to as “best and worst of their people” the history of civilization representatives has been muddled with the years passing in between.

The first written recording (rather than oral tradition) of a representative of a civilization (hereafter referred to as Nation(s); not to be confused with a nation in the legal sense), comes from the works of Gildas the Wise, a 6th-century British monk, who, in describing life for the Britons before and during the siege of the Saxons he describes the courtship of Gwrtheyrn and Eadyð, and the subsequent birth of their child, Arthur. It was largely believed to be falsified tales, much like the Arthurian legends that Gildas was said to have participated in, until the signing of the Magna Carta by King John of England that specified an Arthur Kirkland as an unequivocal equal in terms of governing and right to rule. This Arthur is undoubtedly the same son of Gwrtheyrn and Eadyð; or rather, England, the Nation, is the son of the Nation of Britons and the Nation of Saxons.

While Arthur of England is the first recorded case discovered as of 1775, oral tradition is proof for Nations to exist as far back as the first civilization itself. With the writing of the Magna Carta, more Nations are being written into their governments as time goes on. But the people have always known their Nations; it is almost a feeling of identity within the Nation themself. Which brings the question, how are these Nations created?

A favorite of the traditionalists is that the Nations were created by a young woman who dallied with the fae, leading to the birth of a child that was doomed to live just as long as his world did and in torment, the half-fae child cursed young children born in new civilizations to live as he did. Another favorite theory is that they are created by the belief of the people themselves and a Found by their people. Both of these theories have some credence, as there is something otherworldly about these Nations; often, they have a mystical or spiritual connection not found in the average person. Recorded natures of these Nations have described powers such as; teleporting, delayed aging, witchcraft, immortality, amongst others.

There is also debate amongst scholars in the subject; with the new trend of including Nations in the writings of the government, that Nations will soon drift away from being the best and worst possible of their people and instead become solely a representation of their government. Others argue that the nature of Nations cannot so easily be changed and that the several millennia of the Nations being a representation of the people without needed acknowledgment from their government. The latter argument brings in an odd perspective; will Nations within other Nations start to exist? If one feels a sense of identity within their town, will that, in turn, create a Nation?

The American Colonies are about to find out;


	2. This Is Not a Funeral. It's a Revolution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alfred and Samantha move into their apartment in Philadelphia and get ready for the congregation of the delegates in May. Victoria gets roped into the fighting at Lexington and Concord. Alfred decides that he must go replace her at the front lines, for her own safety, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alfred:: USA, canon Hetalia character  
> Samantha "Sam":: Connecticut Colony / Middle Colonies  
> Victoria:: Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations / New England Colonies

**April 19, 1775** Philadelphia, Province of Pennsylvania

* * *

“Does she always do this?” Alfred asks Samantha as they walk into the front door of their recently purchased apartment in Philadelphia.

“Hmm?” Samantha responds as she settles her and Victoria’s small bags on the armchair in front of the potbelly stove. She frowns at the stove and then shakes her head and Alfred suddenly remembers that his sisters had been in hiding for almost a hundred years. “Who always does what? If it’s about the washerwoman we met on our walk here, I have no idea, Alfred, I just met her.”

Having sisters was exhausting. “No, Victoria.”

“Oh her, what does she do? Or not always do?”

“Get feelings.”

Samantha laughs as she throws the shutters on the windows open. “We are representations of our people, Alfred. We aren’t impassive Gods. Of course, we feel.”

“No, feelings like she needs to go somewhere.”

“Oh. Well, no, not frequently. She’s always missed Boston and wanted to go back, but she never did. Although a few years ago, she got truly worked up and I almost thought she was going to make it to Boston in the dead of night for a few weeks.”

That could line up with the Massacre, or the Tea Party, or when Boston, and conversely Massachusetts as a colony, was placed under military supervision. And she parted from them very hurriedly, like she needed to be in Boston _right then._ Truly, it did not bode well for whatever was about to happen.

“Amazing, isn’t it, opening your shutters and seeing the city right there. No trees in sight for miles!”

Having sisters was going to be a trial.

* * *

> Lexington/Concord April 20, 1775

> Dearest brother A,
> 
> No doubt you have already heard of the salacious rumors from those of up here in the north and I am here to tell you it is true indeed. The regulars fired on patriots in the hills of Massachusetts itself! It was truly spectacular, how it all came about. After I joined Paul and William, the most curious thing happened; I knew they were headed to Concord, as I’m sure you know of our (newly defended!) stronghold there, and so I thought desperately of it. So much so that when I opened my eyes I was standing near the newly assembled militia in Concord! A young patriot handed me a gun and we waited for the lobsterbacks to arrive. And when they did, oh! we fired on them. 
> 
> And brother, I know the plan was for us to reconvene with our patriots in the new city, but I must stay here and stand with my new brothers. You understand of course. Give my best to S and I pray that God as seen fit to bless our course.
> 
> Signed,
> 
> V

* * *

**April 23, 1775** Philadelphia, Province of Pennsylvania

* * *

“I’m going to kill her.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I certainly am!”

“Do you truly think she went to Boston and didn’t tell you that she felt like there was going to be an escalation in the coming days because she thought it would be fun?” Samantha asks blandly as she pours Alfred’s coffee and wisely ignores his fist clenched around the small scrap of paper Victoria sent her note on. He can feel his grip almost tearing the paper. “Or maybe, just maybe, she couldn’t describe the feeling to you, got caught up in Boston and went riding to protect herself?”

“She is going to die if Arthur is there-”

“But he’s not,” Sam says as she sits down across from him. “She would have said. And we would have known.”

The morning sun is streaming through their windows, catching on their window panes and throwing shadows across their kitchen. Arthur on their land has always felt like a looming shadow cast shadow; even if the sky never will darken and the land never quake when he came, Alfred felt the coldness from him regardless. Alfred stares at Sam. She stares back. “Why would he suddenly be here? From the talk before the shots were fired, it was just a routine trip, nothing they haven’t already done to Massachusetts.”

“It’s dangerous for her.”

“It’s more dangerous for the men she’s fighting with,” Samantha points out as she snatches the letter from his hand. Victoria’s hastily scribbled initial and farewell tear-off of the letter and remains clenched in his hand.

“She’s never fired a gun,” Alfred says weakly, he knows because Sam and Victoria lived by themselves in the wilderness of Connecticut for eighty years and he doesn’t know exactly what they did during that time, but he does know that Victoria pulled a knife on him before she recognized him.

Sure enough, Sam scoffs, “Yes she has. How do you think we ate for those long years?”

“How did you get gunpowder?”

“Same way you do, trade. We only used it sparingly, of course. Gunshots would have attracted attention we couldn’t afford and a bow and arrow are just as useful in the long term.” Sam takes a pointed sip of her coffee after this declaration. Alfred feels his embarrassment on his cheeks and clears his throat.

“I should be there.” There something Sam can’t argue.

“Why?”

Of course, he should never discount the tenacity of sisters. This was getting old fast. “What do you mean ‘why’?”

“Has the function of the English language changed in the past eighty years?” Sam demands. “Why do _you_ need to be there?”

“Because-” Alfred scoffs, standing and looming over the table and pointing at the scrap of paper from Victoria. “It just makes sense!”

“How,” Sam asks, her green gaze icy and for a terrifying moment, Alfred sees Arthur in the look. The sensation fades, but the suggestion doesn’t leave the space between them. “Do you have a higher claim to our people than Victoria or I do?”

“You were in hiding for eighty years!”

“Yes,” Sam says, placing her cup down forcefully on the table. Coffee spills out of the cup and onto the note. “In hiding not _dead_. You’re not the only one of us, Alfred.”

“But I will be the last one left,” he declares, puffing up.

His statement rings through their rooms, the silence in its wake more fraught than any words Alfred or Sam could have spit at each other. Sam looks slowly up at Alfred, blinking, her mouth in a soft line. Alfred swears it must be his imagination that his words are still echoing in the room.

“How do you know that?” Sam asks softly.

To Alfred, it is simple, there are no nations that are women. None. At least none of the powerful ones; Alfred can feel it in his bones, in his blood, he and his nation are destined to be powerful and great. So of course, out of him, Victoria, and Samantha, he would be the last one left.

But he finds himself caught in Sam’s piercing gaze. And he suddenly remembers. 

(The creation of their colonies took time, and most of the initial settlements absorbed or fractured over time to develop the thirteen united colonies the three of them represent now; there was one Carolina colony before it became two; Massachusetts colony went through three different names before becoming official. But Connecticut was the only one to have three representatives at a time. And Sam is sitting quietly in front of him. The last one of the three.)

Church bells start to distantly ring out over the city.

Sam stands slowly, cautiously, and crosses to him. She lays a gentle hand on his shirt sleeve cuff. “We should go.”

Alfred turns his head to watch her fetch her wrap and her bonnet. She doesn’t look upset; she looks as if they had been only discussing the weather. She catches him staring at her as she turns again and makes an impatient face at him. With a fumbling hand, he reaches out and grabs his hat on the hook beside the door and offers her his arm as he opens the door.

They step out together.

* * *

**May 8, 1775** Philadelphia, Province of Pennsylvania

* * *

He doesn’t do anything for the next week or so. Sam stops eyeing him distrustfully after the first few days of inaction. He doesn’t stop thinking about how to get to Victoria, because he knows he should. As soon as he is there, everything will be alright and Victoria can head back to Philadelphia with Sam and worry about things there.

It takes a while; he only rented the carriage that brought him and Sam here from Hartford. And before that, she had charmed a homestead near the pond into letting them borrow a horse and donkey for the trip to Hartford. Alfred’s own horses are still down in his house in Virginia.

So he has to buy a horse. And that takes a while.

But he finally has a horse and a small knapsack with a change of clothes for him and Victoria since she probably didn’t have time to grab clothing before she was conscripted. And with luck, Victoria will have enough sense to change before she heads back to Philadelphia before she gets seriously injured in the next skirmish. 

And, the cherry on this pie, is that Sam went to bed early with a headache and, if history is anything to go on, she will be out until the first light of the next day. So he has all night to make his escape.

He waits until it is dark out before he starts to sneak through the apartment, silently with his knapsack.

The candles in the kitchen flare to life as he reaches for the door and he startles badly, knocking his elbow into the wall and dropping the knapsack on his foot. As he grabs at the foot, cursing, he peers up at Samantha through watery eyes.

She looks unimpressed in the flickering candlelight. “Out for a midnight stroll, then, Alfred?” she asks lightly, smiling. The shadows on her face give the expression more malice than she was going for and Alfred shudders again.

Sam, Alfred is learning after living with her for three weeks, has a certain amount of fae in herself. While Alfred has his strength, Sam can cast meagar spells as she explained to him when he first saw her light the fire without a flint. Then she tripped him when he tried to run away and sat on top of him while he calmed down. She delights in tormenting him with spells now, especially when she thinks she is in the right.

“Lord in heaven Samantha!”

She grins wider. “You sound like Victoria.” She nods to the knapsack at his feet. “Going somewhere?”

Alfred looks down at the bag and then back up at Sam as she stands from the kitchen table. The candle nearest him flares to life as she crosses toward him.

“Because it’s odd that you’re running away when our delegates are reconvening in two days' time to discuss our independence. One would call you a coward for running to the front lines in some misguided sense of loyalty or just plain stupidity for your desperation to be the instigator.”

Alfred says nothing to this. He should have known he could never have escaped from Sam so easily.

Sam tilts her head as she comes to a stop in front of him. “Or the hero,” she finishes, her mouth just almost twisted into a sneer.

They stare at each other. The candle flames jump and sway; their shadows ever-changing on both of their faces. Eventually, Sam sighs. 

“If I were Victoria, I would be screaming at you.”

Alfred bristles. “Out of the three of us, I am the one England is expecting to show up at the battlefield. If he knows there are more than one of us, he will start to target you and Victoria. If I can keep his attention on me, at least our people will be safe with you and her.”

Sam blinks. “So you’re a martyr.” A pause. Then; “She doesn’t need your protection.”

“Our people do.”

“So it’s like that, then.”

“Can you think of a better compromise? Until one of us-”

“Is the victor?” Sam’s voice is tired, bone-deep exhaustion clinging to the syllables. “Victoria and I just hide. _Again_.”

“No,” Alfred says, stepping forward. Sam doesn’t flinch back as Victoria had. “You stay here, with our delegates. Keep them safe. I’ll stay with our militia. Victoria will come to meet you here.”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “Good luck getting her to agree to that.” She bends to kiss his cheek. “Ride safe.”

She turns away from him, doesn’t pause to look at his eyes and Alfred knows that’s as much of a blessing as she is willing to give him. He stares after her and only when she disappears from view does he step out of their home.

The candles in the windows whisk out like in wind.

* * *

**June 17, 1775** Charlestown, Massachusetts, United Colonies

* * *

He’s been with the assembled militia for over two weeks and he has yet to find Victoria. He had assumed that she was going to stay with the men, as she had indicated in her note; so he checked with the camp followers, the nurses, and the cooks. He was going to check the maids and seamstresses next but then they were marching on Bunker Hill and so he tabled that idea.

She probably was making her way to Pennsylvania on foot.

No reason to worry.

The battle in and of itself is exhilarating and confusing at the same time. First, his unit got lost and nothing was explained clearly the first time. But when they did get to the front lines, Alfred knew how to aim and shoot his musket at the lobsterbacks in front of them.

That felt good.

It’s not a victory; they lost the land, but Alfred can feel the buoying hope in his people. They could really stand a chance. Maybe if they got some guidance from another power.

Alfred is pacing through their encampment without really watching where he is going, ruminating on how exactly to train his men into being the best military in the world, so good that they would beat the Great British Empire and be known worldwide for their awesome skills when he runs into someone.

The kid goes sprawling on their backside, the cap they were wearing knocking back too, and Alfred stops quickly and immediately starts to apologize. The kid looks up at him, bright green eyes and dirt-smeared cheeks, frozen on the ground before he starts to get up again.

“I’m sorry,” Alfred says, holding out a hand. The kid looks at it and instead pushes himself up without help. “I’m really sorry,” Alfred continues, “I wasn’t looking where I was going; my guardian always says I have my head in the clouds.”

“It’s okay,” the kid mutters, obviously trying to disguise his voice. That catches Alfred’s attention.

He squints at the kid and gets caught staring at the kid’s eyes again. “Are you even old enough to enlist?”

The kid stiffens, scowls, and bends to grab his cap and nods firmly. “Yes.”

“Oh.” The kid slams the cap on his head and makes to step away from Alfred. Alfred sticks his hand out again. “I’m Alfred.”

The kid looks at the hand distrustfully again before taking it and pumping it once. “Victor,” he says, forcing his voice down lower again.

“It was nice to meet you!” Alfred calls at the vanishing back. He feels a little off kilter, left alone in the middle of the camp; he hasn’t really been alone since he found Sam and Victoria, just the days he spent traveling to the militia really, and even then he was alone, not alone with people, which the latter, he knows, is a different feeling, a deeper sting, than the former. It was a look he had recognized in Victoria’s eyes when she had him at knifepoint three months ago.

Wait.

Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding.

* * *

_“Victor!?”_

Victoria scowls and wrenches her arm out of his grip. She rubs at the sore area and doesn’t respond, which is fine, because Alfred is still stuck on the realization that his sister has gone completely insane.

“ _Victor?_ ”

She screws up her expression again and rubs at her wrist more pointedly. “It’s a perfectly respectable name, Alfred,” she scolds in her disguised voice.

Alfred throws his hands up in the air. “Stop doing that!”

“What talking?”

He stares up at the sky and knows, truly and deeply within his soul, that God has forsaken him.

Victoria doesn’t let up; “I have every right to be here, same as you. So don’t you get all uppity about my worth, because I will lay you out on your ass so fast, do you hear me?”

“You’re causing a scene,” he snarls, whipping his head down to stare at his sister. She has her hands on her hips and is glaring up at him, her eyes sparking in a way that reminds him of Samantha. Her hair is short, the ends recently cut he knows because she had long hair two months ago. Alfred feels that complicated mess of righteous anger, fear, and exasperation fill him again as Victoria opens her mouth again.

“You’re the one who dragged me away from my friends without so much as a ‘by your leave’, your fucking highness-”

“Don’t cuss, it’s not-”

“-I will do what I damn well please, thank you very much-”

“Can you please stop yelling?”

“No! You’re acting as though I’m defenseless, you great dumb bumbling fool!”

“You are!”

“How would you know!”

“Is there a problem here?” a caring soul asks from the assembled crowd around them.

They both whip their heads toward the offender and shout, in unison, “No!” The poor sod backs off.

Victoria mulishly stares up at him, her boot tapping the ground around her. The look is not unlike the one every other caretaker he’d had when he was young used to give him. Alfred pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a deep breath.

“Can we do this privately?” he pleads. Victoria opens her mouth, presumably to argue, but then takes in their assembled audience and softens.

Alfred does not expect her to grab his arm and… well, he isn’t really sure what happens after that because he closes his eyes against the sensation. But when he opens his eyes, they are on the outside of the camp, close enough to discern people walking around, but far enough that their voices won’t carry.

“Sit,” Victoria commands with a tug on his arm. Alfred stares at her. Then a dizzying rush of sensation comes back to him and his knees suddenly can’t support himself. Victoria seats herself next to him and pats the back of his hand. “I know, it feels odd the first time. It’ll pass.”

His stomach feels cold; like for a moment, it wasn’t within his body and just now in reintroducing itself. He moans and clutches at it. When he blinks his eyes over to Victoria, she has her mouth pressed together in sympathy. She pats his hand again.

When he feels like he can breathe again, he waves a hand toward her then back at the camp, trying to encompass everything that just happened; “is this like...Sam?”

Victoria shakes her head. “No. Sam was raised by Mohegan and some other tribes for a few years and she learned what she does. I didn’t learn this. Didn’t know I could do this until Paul and I ran into some redcoats on our way to Concord.”

That rings a bell. “You said, in your letter.”

Victoria nods. “I’ve been getting better at pinpointing locations. It helps if I’ve been there before.”

“And you can take people with you?”

She hesitates, then bobs her head in a yes/no fashion. “Well, three days ago, I accidentally took someone with me, but I also felt sick after I did it.” She squints at Alfred. “I don’t feel sick now, so maybe it’s different with you and Samantha.”

Alfred nods. “Do you think Sam and I can do it?”

Victoria shrugs. “Not sure; I also haven’t tried to lift a bison, so…”

She trails off and stares back at the camp. Alfred stares at her. This is good, he thinks, she needn’t have to take days to travel to Sam and safety. She could get there within one blink and the next. He says as much to her and she groans.

“You’re still on that?” she asks needlessly and turns her whole body to look directly into his eyes. “Alfred,” she says as though she is speaking to a young child, “I’m not leaving.”

“Yes, you are.”

“What makes you think you can tell me what to do?”

“I’m your brother.”

“And I’m your sister.”

“That’s not what-”

“No I know what you meant by that,” Victoria snaps. She presses a hand to her eyes and sighs heavily.

Alfred grows more irritated at her apparent attempt to calm down. “War is no place for a woman.”

Victoria drops the hand from her face and glares at him. “Really? And what about them?” She points. Alfred follows her finger and sees an older woman, most likely a nurse if her bloodied apron was anything to go by, chatting lightly with a younger woman as they walked through the camp. Both of them were carrying water skeins. “Huh?” Victoria demands when Alfred doesn’t answer right away.

He feels like a broken record, truly he does. He should have realized that the eighty years he spent alone and they were together that he forgot how to argue and they practiced it in spades. “It’s not safe,” he bites out.

Reaching into her pocket, Victoria doesn’t break eye contact and Alfred only gets a quick glimpse of her favorite dagger- the one she held against his throat five months ago- before she cuts herself shallowly on her arm. Alfred opens his mouth in shock and starts to admonish her before she thrusts the injury under his nose.

It’s closing up.

“I got hit at Lexington,” Victoria says as she tucks her knife away. “I was fine in a day. But you already know we’re immortal-”

“We’re not immortal,” Alfred snaps. He has seen more than one of them die, and he knows Victoria has as well.

“We can’t die by man!” Victoria counters. She’s right, Alfred thinks with a bitter taste in his mouth. “We’re held in their collective consciousness; an idea or identity. If I am to die, I would have no more control over it if I were on the front lines, back with Samantha, or even out in the frontier.”

“You and Sam avoided it once,” Alfred argues.

Victoria stares at him. Then she shakes her head. “No. We didn’t. We only survived because our people refused to forget us.”

“But what about-?”

“Massachusetts and everyone else?” she asks. Alfred nods. She sighs and chews on her lip. “England took their charters. They were freely given by their governors. Their people still believed, but that isn’t strong enough when their government is ready to forget. Mine was not freely given and Sam stole hers. So here we are.”

“Sam stole hers?”

“Yeah.” Victoria looks at him and starts to smile and then laughs at the expression on his face. “You should ask her about it one of these days. It’s a crazy stupid story and I think she makes up half of it each time.”

Sisters, Alfred thinks one more time, shaking his head. They’re quiet for a moment. “You’re not going to leave, are you?”

“Nope,” Victoria says cheerfully and ruffles his hair before she stands. “C’mon, let me introduce you to some of our boys.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 4.20.1775 Victoria refers to Paul (Revere) and William (Dawes), two of the three riders that headed to Concord and were captured by the British on their way there.


	3. Keep Your Head Up, Nothing Lasts Forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Left behind with their delegates in Philadelphia, Sam is bored. Alfred and Victoria are fighting amongst themselves and against the Regulars. Sam is bored. Alfred and Victoria split and join different bands of their militia. The threat of England arriving on their shores hangs over all their heads like a rope swinging from the gallows. And there's something new happening in the north.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Samantha "Sam":: Connecticut Colony / Middle Colonies  
> Alfred:: USA, canon Hetalia character  
> Victoria:: Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations / New England Colonies  
> Sylvia:: New Connecticut

**December 3, 1775** Delaware River, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United Colonies

* * *

The day is a chilly one, but for Samantha, who had once feared the never-ending heat of the congressional room in the summer, it is welcome. The ice is just breaking down the Delaware and a strong wind is rustling through the assembled crowd.

USS _Alfred_ stands tall in the late morning sun and Samantha starts to smile deeper. Ben, who is at her arm and has graciously accompanied her to church since Alfred and Victoria disappeared into Massachusetts, puffs his chest up as the crew starts to board the newly outfitted warship. They pass by Ben and Samantha last; they nod in her direction and Samantha bows her head to them in benediction.

She is remembering what it was exactly to be of the people. To know that they knew her just as surely as she knew them and in remembering, she is happy.

John Paul Jones stops in front of her and grins widely before bowing deeply and taking her hand, as though she is a lady of great standing, and kissing the back of it. His brown eyes sparkle as he looks back up at her. A few of his crew call for him and he tips his hat to her once more before taking off up the plank of the ship.

Samantha leans into Ben, just a tad, as they wait for the ship to get started on its journey. The crowd around them starts to cheer, but it’s nothing for when the Grand Union flag finishes its climb to snap out proudly in the wind.

The crowd cheers and Samantha holds the feeling behind her breastbone.

* * *

> Dorchester February 25, 1776
> 
> my dear sister,
> 
> Our brother continues his mission to act a fool and I miss you and your sensibility more every day. I hope this letter reaches you before your birthday so that my wishes for a whole and hale 140th year are not late.
> 
> His excellency plans to move forward on the heights in the next coming days. If you find our dear brother listed in the casualties, know that it was I who put the bullet betwixt his eyes.
> 
> Signed,
> 
> V
> 
> * * *
> 
> Boston March 9, 1776
> 
> my beloved sister,
> 
> i am saddened to know that i missed sending you wishes for a prosperous new year in V’s latest letter. but then again, i never learned of either of your birthdays. if you would be so kind as to tell me v’s so i can prevent the incessant complaining when i inevitably disregard it that would be splendid.
> 
> i am headed away from v and her patriots and down to join my own.
> 
> God be with ye and our delegates
> 
> A
> 
> * * *
> 
> New York April 15, 1776
> 
> my dear sister,
> 
> Remember the Ladies! Fascinating, truly! I wish I had more time to speak to you on it, but his excellency has me now within his personal guard and we are busy from sunrise to sunset. I would beg of you, my sister, though you most certainly do, to remember the ladies here; the ones stitching your patriots up and serving their meals. They need another in their court besides I.
> 
> Smallpox continues to devastate. A writes that he lost seven in the last week. We have lost nine.
> 
> Signed,
> 
> V
> 
> * * *
> 
> Williamsburg May 5, 1776
> 
> my sister,
> 
> he is helping. a donation of livres were received today. be safe.
> 
> God be with ye,
> 
> A

* * *

 **June 18, 1776** Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United Colonies

* * *

Sometimes she sits in with the committee writing the declaration just to relieve herself of the monotonous boredom of sitting in the council chambers and hearing General Washington’s depressing reports of the battlefield. At least the letters she receives from Alfred and Victoria have at least a little gossip.

She likes sitting next to Roger during these meetings. She’s noticed-- not consciously by any means, more like unconsciously until she thought about it one lonely night amid the hundreds since Alfred left-- that, while all the delegates are hers, and Alfred’s and Victoria’s, some are more hers than others. The delegates from Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland all fall under that umbrella. Roger Sherman, of Connecticut, is her favorite of all of them; he’s soft-spoken and not prone to arguing or joining rising arguments like Ben, John, and Thomas. It’s refreshing to listen to his quiet corrections and suggestions for compromise, especially when John starts on a tirade.

They are discussing the list of grievances. John is arguing that the grievance about forced taxation without representation should be three spaces above where it was put; Thomas claims to do so would favor Massachusetts and disregard the concerns of the other colonies; Ben and Philip are complaining about the heat or the flies; John demands to know what other colony has been shortchanged as much as Massachusetts in the face of King George’s tyranny. Samantha is frowning at her lap, twisting her fingers together and thinking about her embroidering project at home by her chair.

“What other grievance is there that doesn’t affect Massachusetts alone?” John Adams snaps, throwing a sheet in the air. Thomas opens his mouth as the rest of the room goes silent.

“The charters,” Samantha says softly, picking at the hangnail on her left hand.

Roger shifts next to her and Thomas and John look at her. “The charters?” Thomas says.

Ben brightens. “Of course! Gentlemen, we have disregarded Miss Samantha’s omnipresent knowledge. She was there when they were written and when they were taken away.”

A cold spike of emotion shoots through her stomach. It’s delayed grief when she pokes at it. She’s not ready to talk about it, she realizes quickly with a sinking feeling sweeping from her chest to her toes. Roger is the only one in the room to remember living under charters since hers was reinstated after the dominion, even if it’s not the original copy. That one she keeps in the trunk she and Victoria buried in their old house.

“She does not mean the royal charters,” Roger says next to her and she is taken aback when Philip starts to nod as well, as though they know her. Ben hmms thoughtfully and smiles brightly at John and Thomas. Samantha can’t get her tongue to start moving.

John nods in recognition. “The ones from before the old dominion.”

Thomas, easily the youngest amongst them all, frowns at the nodding heads. “What is the difference?”

Four heads swivel to Samantha. Roger only reaches and clasps her hand. “The Connecticut charter was signed in 1662 by King Charles II. It has let us self-govern since then, even during the dominion,” he says, nodding to John.

“Removal of it,” John picks up, “is the removal of protection and our own rights as citizens.”

Thomas starts to nod and moves to write something down on his first draft. If she doesn’t speak now, she will never have another chance to tell them. And even though the act of talking about it feels so fragile and the fear that Arthur will _know_ if she speaks--

She wants him to know.

“It’s more than that,” she says. The pen stills and the heads swivel to her again. She clears her throat. “Revocation of a charter is a purposeful killing of a Nation.”

The men are silent, confused. Samantha smiles, bittersweet and regretful. Ben Franklin sits up straighter, as though she is a village elder whose words were of the utmost importance. In a way she is.

“In total, there used to be sixteen of us. I knew only a handful of them before the dominion and revocation of their charters and my years of self-imposed exile. Of the original sixteen, there are three of us; Victoria was Rhode Island, Alfred was Virginia, and I was Connecticut.” She looks at Thomas and Roger briefly as she speaks; Roger smiles, he knew, somewhere deep within himself he knew he was hers as she was his; Thomas blinks, his brow furrowed, probably trying to remember if he met an Alfred or trying to find that humming feeling that stretches from him to Alfred. Samantha looks at Ben and says, grief starting to weigh down her words, “Pennsylvania and I never met face to face. Her name was Hannah. I’m not sure when she died, but I haven’t heard or seen or felt her in almost fifty years.

“New York,” she says turning to Philip, “I never met; he was sickly as a child and he was assimilated into the dominion quickly.” She has to take deep breaths before she feels ready to confront John, who is leaning forward, anxious for the story of his Nation. She swallows hard and knows there are tears in her eyes as she makes eye contact with him. “His name was Peregrine,” she forces out. “I met him in 1639. I spent every summer with him since 1644, and then every winter with him until the dominion. He was my closest friend, my dear brother.” The men listening to her are all silent and she works her jaw for a moment. “And England killed him. With no remorse.

“When you lose your charter, it’s like you’re yanked from your own body. I feel the land around us closer than anyone and, every person who walks through here, I know and feel. That is taken away with the charter and you wish, desperately and deeply within yourself, for the slow fading death that is soon to follow it. And if you were sick before it happened,” she feels her face twist in anger, remembering Selah’s tearful cries before she vanished, “it’s only longer, as though to punish you for not serving your people while you could.

“He tried to take mine and I ran like hell to keep England’s grimy, _nasty_ hands from it.” Roger looks at her, appraisingly and Samanta grins, manically, she’s sure. The story of her midnight ride from Windsor has faded into a whispered folk tale.

“You have more grievances with the King than I, that I will not contest, but I ask that you not forget their cruelty toward your Nations,” she finishes, bitter and blinking back the angry tears in her eyes.

Thomas Jefferson looks deeply at her and she straightens her spine and looks back. He picks his pen up again and writes. “For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments.”

Samantha takes a deep breath and nods. The assembled gentlemen take the cue from her and nod their approval.

Ben taps his cane on the floor. “Gentlemen, a moment of silence for our Nation-patriots.”

Samantha closes her eyes and lets a tear fall.

* * *

> Richmond Heights June 28, 1776
> 
> dear sister,
> 
> A traitor to our cause, one who if the master of this house had not caught would have succeeded and all would have been like it had been in ‘87, has been hung by the neck until he died this morn. I am replacing him in our excellency’s favor. I wish that I could visit, but it is impossible now. I beg that you make our delegates see how we suffer.
> 
> Signed,
> 
> V

* * *

**June 28, 1776** Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United Colonies

* * *

When a person has spent nearly a hundred years only able to talk to one other person, it is assumed that they would not get bored easily after all those years of limited social engagement. However, after the third day of a truly riveting argument, in the sweltering heat of a Philadelphia summer, Samantha is bored out of her skull and flipping through Payne’s newest scandalous work. Around her, the delegates are viciously arguing over something about the new draft of the declaration. Her little desk, just to the side of John Hancock’s desk, has both letters from Victoria and Alfred along with a piece of paper she was using to take notes on before she got distracted by her newest book.

John Adams raises his voice and she glances up curiously, but the South Carolina delegates seem to bear the brunt of his frustration and she lets the conversation happen around her. Normally, she would be focused in, if not for herself then for Alfred and Victoria as they are anxious for any scrap of news from the congress. But she is so bored, and she has heard this argument before. And she damn well will hear it again before the day is out.

It's hot.

She can feel a bead of sweat roll down her temple and the air is heavy in their little sectioned off room. John Hancock is starting to slump over his podium, as he does after his midday meal. Ben stands from the back of the room and joins in the discussion. In an effort to deter her inevitable involvement in the argument- as once Ben starts to pontificate she tends to become one of his points against his debate partner which often results in her joining the floor- she picks up her pen and starts to pen a letter to Victoria; important correspondence to her war fellows is always something the delegates let her engage in without interrupting her, no matter that it mostly is filled with idle gossip from their sessions.

The conversation eventually quiets around her and she looks up and makes eye contact with Roger Sherman who smiles tightly at her, his face still red with the heat. John Hancock calls for a vote and she waits until Roger puts his hand up to vote with him.

It wouldn’t do to show favoritism, after all, so she doesn’t vote in their debates often. And the dissenting voices seem a little flustered as her open support.

* * *

**July 4, 1776** Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United Colonies

* * *

The air in the congress room is tense the Tuesday after their last meeting on Friday. John Hancock calls for a vote on the resolution to declare independence and Samantha can’t stop herself from giving her whole attention to her delegates as they start first with New Hampshire and move around the room.

The fact that they are voting has not, in the past, stopped any of her most treasured troublemaking delegates from pontificating, so it doesn’t exactly surprise her now when John Adams puffs up again in the face of the South Carolina delegates.

And then Ben involves himself.

And then Thomas is brought into it.

It all culminates with Jefferson stomping over to his draft and, rather dramatically, scratching out a section of the draft.

John Adams throws the edited document at Edward Rutledge and Rutledge votes yea and stalks up to the front of the room to replace the page of their declaration. And Samantha watches Edward walk up and distantly she hears the measured beat of an army drum.

Fear spiking in her heart, she glances out the open windows of the hall. But no one else in the room responds to the sound and she can’t feel any invaders in Philadelphia and she knows their continental army is staying in New York for a while. Samantha turns back to look at Edward and she feels her vision narrow in on him and the drums match her heartbeat thudding in her ears. For a moment, she swears, she sees brown hair pulled into a queue and a neatly trimmed beard where Rutledge has his rolled curls and clean jawline.

She blinks herself out of the stupor and realizes she missed half of the drama with the three Pennsylvania delegates and that both Ben and John Dickinson are pontificating on the floor. Everyone’s attention slowly shifts over to the third delegate from Pennsylvania as he stands.

“I don’t want to be remembered,” James Wilson says, softly confident in a way Samantha hasn’t heard since Selah. James looks desperately around the room and then; “I’m sorry, John. My vote...is yea.”

Elation swells within Samantha and she sees it mirrored on Ben Franklin’s face as he tells the secretary that Pennsylvania’s vote is “yea.”

The motion to declare independence passes.

There is a conversation between the secretary and the president, but Samantha takes a moment to close her eyes and to pray and sees her dear siblings, Peregrine and Victoria front and center and the faceless ones she has lost in the years since the Dominion. _Justice_.

The room is silent. Samantha looks up to see John Dickinson standing alone, lost and unsure of himself. He looks at John Hancock and starts to shake his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. President. I cannot, in good conscience, sign such a document. I will never stop hoping for our eventual reconciliation with England, but…”

He then turns and looks at Samantha and when she looks in his eyes she can feel his heart, his love for her. “...Because, in my own way, I regard America no less than does Mr. Adams, I will join the army and fight in her defense, even though I believe that fight to be hopeless.” 

Dickinson stops and grabs his things. He bows his head to the assembled gentlemen, “Goodbye, gentlemen.” He walks toward the door and just before he pushes the door open, Samantha rushes to her feet.

“Gentlemen of the Congress,” she says and their heads swivel to her. John Dickinson stops. She almost never speaks of her own volition in their meetings. “I say ye, John Dickinson.”

The congress pounds their fists onto their desks and John’s head bows. Then he steps out of the room.

The door closes behind him.

The silence holds for a moment before John Hancock stands and takes his quill in his hand and signs the document. Samantha is still standing and she wanders to the side and sees his rather large signature. John sees her looking. “So fat George in London can read it without his glasses,” he says and winks at her. She laughs with the rest of the congress and John waves his quill about his head, gesturing to the assembled room.

“Alright, step right up gentlemen, don’t miss your chance to commit treason.”

The congress roars again and Sam feels the tension that had been ratcheting up in the room for the past year finally losing its tight grip on them all.

Ben loudly proclaims after the laughter dies down, “Oh my God, he’s right. This paper is our passport to the gallows. But there’s no backing out now; for if we do not hang together, we shall most assuredly hang separately.”

The congress roars again.

“Gentlemen, forgive me if I don’t join in the merriment,” John Hancock says, glaring at them all from his podium, “but if we are arrested now, my name is _still the only one on the damn thing_! McNair, go ring the bell.”

The room sobers up as the young man exits the hall. The secretary stands and begins to call the delegates up by colony; New Hampshire first, and ending with Georgia.

Tears fill her eyes as they all sign and she catches the section about the revoking of their charters and she feels deep in her heart the ache she felt when they all, one by one, disappeared. Justice for them, she thinks again. She closes her eyes and tries to feel Victoria and Alfred, to let them know even a small bit of her overwhelming elation.

When she opens them again, John Hancock is smiling at her and he holds the quill toward her.

She takes it, a bright grin on her face.

She signs;

_Samantha Jones_

* * *

> Williamsburg July 18, 1776
> 
> my sister,
> 
> my governor henry received the word of our Declaration today and i your letter! i am elated and so very proud of your work with our delegates and rather delighted with our choice in last name! fantastic choice!
> 
> nothing new to report; i have not seen any foreign patriots in the area nor any adversaries.
> 
> God be with ye,
> 
> A. Jones
> 
> * * *
> 
> New York August 12, 1776
> 
> dear sister,
> 
> I regret the days that have passed since I was able to write to you; the general is in need of nurses and I have had to put aside victor and reenlist to help our suffering men. The smallpox is sweeping through the ranks and desertion is not helping with the numbers we keep losing. But I am cheered by our declaration. I only wish I could have been there to see that scoundrel Arthur’s face when he read it! Ha! That gets me through my many long days.
> 
> Counsel our congress well, sister.
> 
> Signed,
> 
> V. Jones
> 
> * * *
> 
> Williamsburg September 25, 1776
> 
> my sister,
> 
> remember these words: i only regret that i have but one life to give for my country. i learned today of your patriot who passed with those his dying words. he was a hero and i thank you for the sacrifice.
> 
> nothing new to report.
> 
> God be with ye,
> 
> A. Jones
> 
> * * *
> 
> White Plains, New York October 27, 1776
> 
> my dear sister,
> 
> I am going to steal his Majesty’s horses and I will be glad to have done so. His excellency has offered $100 for each one recovered. Wish me luck.
> 
> His ships still look like plagues on the horizon.
> 
> Signed,
> 
> V. Jones
> 
> * * *
> 
> Fort Lee November 18, 1776
> 
> my sister,
> 
> I rode hard to rejoin V with his excellency, but it was all for naught. We lost the island.
> 
> I am sure you know. he is here. be safe, I beg.
> 
> God be with ye,
> 
> A. Jones
> 
> * * *
> 
> Delaware December 24, 1776
> 
> sister,
> 
> We are marching across the river. I hope this will be a better Christmas present than I have been able to give you in the past, not counting of course when i found those oranges for the both of us.
> 
> Signed,
> 
> V. Jones

* * *

 **January 15, 1777** Baltimore, Maryland, United States

* * *

Samantha wakes up in the middle of the night and feels distinctly weird. After a moment of tossing and turning, she sits up, frowning down at her lap. She glances at the shuttered window by her bed and reluctantly throws her blankets off and stands. Opening the shutters a crack, she peers out toward where she knows the banks of the Patapsco are. The lights from the street lamps don’t show any new ships in the harbor.

 _And even if he was here_ , Samantha thinks as she sets the shutters back in place, _he would not be quietly hiding until dawn in the harbor_. 

She lights the fire in her fireplace with a quick glance and wraps her shoulders in an old blanket she’s held onto since she moved to Philadelphia with Alfred. She rubs at her forehead and sits in the chair and waits for the room to warm up again.

She feels like she swallowed ice cold water too fast; her mouth is cold and deep in her chest the cold is aching.

It feels like it did when Selah and Levi died, but also not like it at all. Panicked, she thinks, _What if something happened to Victoria?_

 _Or Alfred_ , she adds, slightly chagrined that her brother was not immediately thought of. Though, in her defense, she spent eighty years terrified that either her or Victoria would pass or disappear at the drop of a hat so it’s more like a reflex at this point. And Alfred and she barely spent a month together before he ran away to the front lines. And before that, she only knew of him from the stories England would tell her.

The room warms now and she flexes her stockinged feet toward the grate, feeling the heat lick up the soles of her feet. A burst of cold sensation rolls from the top of her head down her spine and Samantha shudders. Her eyes close against the sensation and when it finishes, she knows.

Her eyes snap open and she looks out her window to the north.

* * *

**May 2, 1777** Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

* * *

She pulls the door shut tightly behind her before locking it. In a sort of odd way, she thinks about the night Alfred had stolen out of the very same apartment she was now locking. She tries the door handle once more before wrapping the key on her necklace and tucking it below her shift, tight to her chest.

Her bag that she has on her back is filled with a change of clothes, a few handfuls of food, and Alfred’s old pistol she stole out of his knapsack the first time he left. She has bullets and a bag of gunpowder in the pockets of her underdress. Samantha rolls her shoulders and takes a deep breath.

Victoria never really explained what happened when she managed to teleport and only a little more in how she managed to do it. And when she did do it, she was only doing it within like five miles or more. Not multiple states in between. Breathing deeply, Samantha concentrates very hard on the missing sensation in her stomach.

Nothing happens for a moment. Then; there’s a lurch in her stomach and she feels herself stretching up and out. She feels Hartford, her heart, where she starts moving for without conscious thought. Duller still is Philadelphia and then Granville, the New York town she is aiming for. She thinks desperately of that tiny town, throws herself toward it and opens her eyes.

Images flash past her, faster and faster, sounds are clear one second and then gone the next. Her eyes close.

It all stops.

She feels the change around her, from the hallway outside of her apartment to standing in the open air of northern New York. And the swooping of her stomach, as though it had traveled just behind her. She clamps a hand over her mouth so she doesn’t hurl into the bushes beside her.

Tentatively, she opens her eyes, blinking at the early dawn light. The cobblestone street she is standing on is empty and the windows shuttered in all of the houses.

She shudders; it’s slightly chillier than it was in Philadelphia. And the sensation she has felt from this area since January is stronger and she looks down the main street to see the border of the town.

 _Nothing to it_ , she thinks rallying and starts to walk down the path.

* * *

It takes her four days to reach Windsor and she is grouchy and dirty and really regretting not buying a horse or even just taking one from Philadelphia. Curse her impatience.

Most of the grouchiness, she is willing to concede as she walks through the center of town, is from having to sleep on the hard-packed dirt along the mountainous route. A small portion of it comes from the fact that this is her first time outside of her own territory since she visited Massachusetts with Victoria summer of 1662. Not that it’s painful, oh no, the opposite in fact. It’s a loss of sensation more than anything, like the way you felt after you stepped off a boat for months a sea, expecting a waving motion and stumbling over the still ground.

A pair of children run past her, cheering, flowers braided in their hair and behind their ears, and their caretaker meanders behind them, a baby propped on her hip.

Samantha watches them pass before she heads toward the inn across the green. She honestly has no idea how to go about accomplishing her goal (steal the new Nation back to Philadelphia so that Arthur can’t steal them and thus divide the North) without causing a stir or a scene. Even though she was the oldest territory in Connecticut, she was also the last one found, and New Hampshire was found by Massachusetts. She doesn’t really know what she’s looking for, other than probably a baby? But is the baby by itself? Does it have a mother?

Does _Samantha_ have a mother?

“Welcome to New Connecticut,” a cheerful voice breaks into her thoughts and she startles, looking up at the man at the front desk of the inn.

“Hello,” she answers, still a little startled by the name and getting jostled out of her thoughts. “I- uh, one-room please.”

“Certainly, Miss...?”

“Jones,” she answers and tilts her head. Curiously, the man before her feels like hers, but in the way that Victoria’s people feel like hers. Perhaps he hasn’t fully devoted himself to his new nation.

“Where are you visiting from?” the man asks as he finds a key for her.

She smiles privately as she accepts the key. “Windsor, Connecticut.”

The man smiles at the irony. “Gonna be in town for a few days?”

“At least,” she agrees. She holds the key up and nods her head. “Thank you.”

“Room 203,” he says, “and ask for Thomas if you need anything, Miss Jones.”

She looks back to smile at him sweetly over her shoulder before heading up to her room.

* * *

**May 7, 1777** Windsor, New Connecticut

* * *

She came up with several improbable situations as she was laying awake, not sleeping last night, ranging from the people of New Connecticut just giving her the child like an offering to her having to steal the child like her charter in the middle of the night.

In the end, it happens like neither of those and yet like both of them.

They have an open session of their version of congress so Samantha sneaks in the back of the crowd and sits in the corner where she can just observe the masses. There is a young woman, standing toward the front with the rest of the partitioners, rocking a baby on her hip. Two older women are watching over three toddler age children. A man is holding a baby, about old enough to stand on its own but not walk, by the exit, scowling at anyone who looks his way.

Samantha can feel the presence near her, but not any clearer than it was in Philadelphia. She wonders if the delegates are wondering why she’s gone or if they even miss her. She’s distracted from that thought by the man with the baby turning abruptly toward her.

He marches over to her, scowling and Samantha straightens.

“Are you from around here?” he demands, frowning at her. The baby on his hip stares, eyes open wide at her.

Samantha blinks. “No…?”

He grunts and looks around quickly. The baby strains toward her, reaching a chubby hand out. “You from… up North?”

Samantha shakes her head and stands. She has a feeling that the child she is looking for is in this man’s arms. Reaching a hand out to hold the baby’s hand, Samantha knows she is right. The baby coos excitedly, waving their joined hands together. “No, I’m actually from Philadelphia.”

“Mm-hmm,” the man agrees and casts a look around again. “Here.” He hands her the baby, who coos and bounces in her arms. “She just showed up a few months ago and nearly had my new wife in some serious trouble. ‘Specially since we hadn’t tied the knot yet.”

The baby reaches into her hair and tugs at the strands at the base of her neck. The man takes a step back and looks at the two of them for a long moment. Then he steps back in swiftly presses a kiss to the child’s cheek and backs away. “We called her Sylvia,” he says, his voice thick, “take care of her.”

Samantha brushes back Sylvia’s gold spun hair and nods as the man leaves the statehouse. She’s unfamiliar with the weight and movement of the baby and she takes a moment, feeling the not quite strain alongside the comfortable feeling of holding the child. There’s a thrumming in her veins that is very similar to how she feels with Victoria and Alfred. The baby looks deep in her eyes, almost as though she knows that they are the same in ways the people around them are not like them.

Samantha smiles and kisses the baby’s forehead. Sylvia giggles excitedly, tugging on Samantha’s curls. “Well,” she says softly, “we best be getting back to Philadelphia, huh?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 4.15.1776 Victoria's Letter: "Remember the Ladies" was written by Abigail Adams to her husband John to urge him to remember the rights of women when writing the declaration.  
> 5.5.1776 Alfred's Letter: King Louis XVI agrees to loan 1 mil. livres (French currency) to "Hortalez & Cie., a company specifically organized to provide funds and military stores to the American cause, thereby establishing secret aid to the patriots."  
> 6.18.1776 Samantha references past colonies; Selah and Levi's story begins in Pickles; Peregrine and Hannah, the chosen names for Massachusetts and Pennsylvania respectively, are based on real people who lived, Peregrine White, the first child born in the Massachusetts bay to the Pilgrims, and Hannah Callowhill Penn, administrator of the Province of Pennsylvania from 1718 to 1727 and second wife to the founder of Pennsylvania.  
> 6.28.1776 Victoria's Letter: Thomas Hickey is hung by the neck until death with the charge of conspiring to kill George Washington.  
> 7.4.1776 The dialogue from this section is almost lifted verbatim from the movie version of 1776 because I could not stop listening to it while writing this.  
> 9.25.1776 Alfred's Letter: Nathan Hale, a CT born soldier and spy, speaks those last words before being hung by the neck until death by British forces. In 1985 he was officially designated as Connecticut's state hero.  
> 11.8.1776 Alfred's Letter: Manhatten is now controlled by the British. Fort Washington will be captured on the 16th.  
> 12.24.1776 Victoria's Letter: Crossing of the Delaware River leads to the battle of Trenton, the first major victory of the American militia.  
> 1.15.1777 The American congress had to flee Pennsylvania to Baltimore. The Patapsco River flows into the Chesapeake Bay and many feared the British would force themselves up the river and target the hiding congress.


	4. Interlude: Just Wait, Everything Will Be Okay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raising a toddler is not as easy as it was when Samantha was the toddler. Victoria and Alfred just want to have one night of peaceful rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Samantha "Sam":: Connecticut Colony / Middle Colonies  
> Sylvia:: New Connecticut  
> Victoria:: Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations / New England Colonies  
> Alfred:: USA, canon Hetalia character / Southern Colonies

**November 15, 1777** York, Pennsylvania, United States of America

* * *

“Shite,” Samantha curses and sticks her finger in her mouth.

“Shite,” Sylvia parrots from where she’s playing by the table. Samantha closes her eyes, defeated and exhausted.

“Sylvie?” she coaxes and the child turns to her, grinning wide. “What did we say about repeating bad words that Sam says?”

“‘Am,” Sylvia nods and pushes herself up onto her feet. Samantha shakes her head fondly as Sylvia starts to toddle toward her, her doll in her hands. “No, no, no,” she says with each step. She holds the doll up to Samantha for inspection when she arrives. She has undone the braids she had demanded Samantha put in last night before bed and pulled half of the hair into a knot at the forehead.

“Very pretty,” Sam assures her, “but babies don’t play near the hearth.”

Sylvia scowls and stamps her foot. “No,” she whines.

Samantha shakes her head and reaches again for the hot pot she had burned her finger on, this time with a rag wrapped around the handle. “This is hot, Sylvia. Hot hurts.”

“ _No_ , ‘Am.”

“Yes it does,” Sam says, placing the pot on a potholder. She turns around and snags the back of Sylvia’s dress. The baby squeals as Samantha pulls her up into her arms. Samantha puts her hand almost in the fire and yanks it back, shaking it as though she had been burnt. “Ow,” she says pointedly. Sylvia’s mouth and eyes are wide as she stares at Sam, and ‒finally‒ Sam lets herself hope that she got through to her.

No such luck. Sylvia bursts into a peal of laughter and pushes the hand not holding her doll into Samantha’s face and then pulls it back. “Ow!” she giggles.

Samantha closes her eyes as Sylvia does it again to Samantha and then once to her doll, cackling madly the entire time. Her little legs kick and bump against Samantha’s midsection somewhat painfully.

Do not yell at the small child.

Do _not_ yell at the small child.

“Ow Sylvia!” Samantha exclaims after Sylvia jabs a heel directly into Samantha’s kidney. She bends down to drop Sylvia to the floor, sucking a deep breath in. The baby looks up at her, troubled. Sylvia drops her doll and presses her fat hands to Samantha’s cheeks.

“‘Am?” she says, seriously. Samantha looks at her, still bent over. Sylvia tilts her head and says, just as seriously, “Ow?”

“Yes,” Samantha says, relieved that Sylvia seems to understand the concept.

Sylvia’s eyes fill with water and she starts sobbing.

“No no, Sylvia, please stop crying,” Samantha babbles as she picks her up. Sylvia is resistant to any shushing, still crying at the top of her lungs.

Samantha walks around their small apartment, rocking the child, desperately trying not to let the cries give her another headache. She has to be at the meeting house in less than an hour and she also needs to feed Sylvia and put out the fire in the hearth. “C’mon, take your dolly, Sylvia. Take the dolly and please stop crying.”

Sylvia quiets for a moment and looks at the doll Sam has shoved in her face. She touches the doll’s cheek and looks back at Samantha. And bursts into tears again.

_Oh Lord in Heaven._

“No, shh shh, Sylvia, you’re okay, I’m okay. Please stop crying.” Sylvia does not. Samantha starts to hum Sylvia’s favorite lullaby. This quiets Sylvia and she looks at Samantha bewilderedly. Seeing that she has her attention, Samantha quietly starts to sing, rocking her and Sylvia as though they were dancing. Sylvia keeps staring at Samantha, but slowly she stops hiccuping and cuddles down against Samantha’s throat.

“Sam really needs to get to town, not riding on a pony,” Sam continues to sing to the same tune when she runs out of lyrics. “They’re signing the new laws today, and it’s impor-tant! Sylvia, please stop crying, Sylvia sweetie! Mind the hearth and your porridge and please don’t cry for hours!”

Knowing that any attempt to put Sylvia down now would just result in more screaming theatrics, Sam slowly and uncoordinatedly spoons Sylvia’s portion of the cooling porridge into a bowl. She alternates humming and singing nonsense lyrics as she bounces Sylvia.

Once finished, she swiftly sits down, plopping Sylvia in her lap and, before she can start to scream, pushing a spoonful of porridge into the child’s mouth.

“The day you learn to eat by yourself will be a great day, indeed,” Sam promises as Sylvia opens her mouth like a bird and slaps at Samantha’s arm until she feeds her again.

* * *

 **December 16, 1777** Whitemarsh Township, Pennsylvania, United States of America

* * *

It’s freezing.

By some grace from above, Alfred and she still had their shoes mostly intact where a good portion of their men did not have them any longer. It was a sobering thought now that they were slowly making their way toward their winter encampment.

Alfred is already asleep when she makes it back to their small tent, flat on his stomach and snoring up a storm. Her fingers and toes are numb from working with the nurses and doctors all day. The stale smell of sweat coming from their tent is a relief after the piss-shit-and-puss smell of the wounded.

She hasn’t had the chance to wash her face or anything else aside from her hands in the past month. Alfred hasn’t washed anything since she poured a bucket of water over his head to wake him up two months ago. She rubs her fingers and stretches them toward the still-hot coals. Victoria flexes her toes in her shoes and suddenly, achingly misses playing with Samantha on the shores of their lake. 

It’s _fucking_ freezing.

She closes her eyes for a moment, breathing heavily on her hands. She can feel Alfred, Samantha, and the new child Samantha had mentioned, their auras pulsing steadily near her. Samantha and the child are farther away, but still close. Sometimes she hopes Samantha reaches out for her as Victoria reaches for her. She knows Alfred does it to her, especially after skirmishes. She can feel New England, humming farther up to the north, Massachusetts and New Hampshire and good old Rhode Island. Even more distantly, she can feel her boys in their encampment, on their way to their new encampment, and scattered with the British.

“Get in, Vic,” Alfred interrupts her thoughts with his cracking voice. She startles for a moment, throws a handful of ashes over the dying embers, and then moves over to their shared bedroll. Alfred is warmer than the fire and he rolls on his side to let her slide underneath him. He tugs their blankets over the two of them, leaving his arm around her shoulders, a heavy, warm, and reassuring weight. He shifts to lay more on top of her, resting his head on the top of hers.

She has always been jealous of Alfred and Samantha’s height, but not any longer when she is just the right size to cuddle into the warm space between her and Alfred when the night is freezing around them.

Victoria reaches out again, feeling Alfred near her, Sam and the child somewhere to the south, her boys scattered around their land. She is exhausted and slowly she starts to drift off.

Then Alfred flinches violently in his sleep and jabs his elbow into her back.

“Ah! Alfred!” she snaps as he rolls the other way from her, breathing heavily. Victoria pushes herself up and stares at him, freezing again now that her heater and blanket are on the other side of the tent and now in the dirt. “What the hell was that?”

Alfred doesn’t answer, still staring up at the canopy of their tent, breathing hard, as though he has run a mile. He presses one hand against his stomach and breathes. Victoria kneels and creeps toward him slowly. She hasn’t seen him have this kind of fit yet, but they’ve had their share of new sensations.

As Alfred brings a hand slowly up, shaking, in front of his eyes, Victoria suddenly feels real fear that she is going to watch Alfred slowly fade. The horror sinks in her stomach, a slimy feeling like when she and Samantha tried to eat snails that one time without cooking them properly. But there is no Samantha here to laugh with her when they both make weird faces. 

He flexes his hand, turning it over and back. Then he sighs and drops his hand, eyes closing. Alfred doesn’t startle when she presses a hand to his shoulder. He only looks at her and shakes his head.

“Sorry, I woke you. It’s nothing,” he says as he gets up and moves back toward their bedroll, shaking the dirt out of the blanket before spreading it over the two of them. “Just a bad feeling.”

“A bad feeling?” Victoria asks incredulously. “Stop trying to be the macho man, Al. What happened?”

Alfred shakes his head and tries to tug her flat. She won’t let him move her and he knows that she’ll lay him out of his ass faster than a whip if he tries to move her with his great strength. “I think I just ate something that didn’t agree with me.”

“What was different about the fire cakes and water today that didn’t agree with you?” she snaps.

“Vic, it’s freezing. Lie down. I’m fine.”

She lays down, but she makes it very clear that she thinks Alfred is being stupid. She remains on her back, arms crossed. “If you die in the middle of the night, I’m going to be very cross with you,” she tells his shadow.

Alfred laughs quietly without humor so she knows she wasn’t far off the mark. “You’ll freeze to death without me.”

Victoria presses closer to him and Alfred wraps his arm around her waist, keeping the blanket evenly on either side of them. She closes her eyes and he does the same. They breathe. In the silence between their breaths, Victoria hears pounding feet.

She already has two tight hands on their blankets when the feet and the light accompanying them reach their tent. Alfred sits up, though the action pains him.

“Major General Jones?” a breathless voice says. Alfred turns to her quizzically and she jerks her chin toward him, sitting up on their bedroll as well. Alfred is a major general where she is just a nurse.

“Identify yourself, soldier,” Alfred commands.

“Dade, sir.”

“What’s going on Dade?” Alfred asks, reaching for his discarded boots. This isn’t the first time either of them has been woken in the middle of the night, but most often it was Victoria and always about injured men.

“It’s easier to uh show you, sir,” the voice says, the light shifting as though Dade is shifting his weight foot to foot.

Alfred looks at Victoria and she shrugs but also stands, her shoes still on her feet. She wraps the blanket around her shoulders since her attention is not needed. Alfred jabs his hat on his head and opens the tent flap. Dade stands there, holding a lantern in one hand and a mess of blankets in the other. He looks pale and glances quickly at Victoria when he sees her through the doorway. Dade looks again at Alfred and gestures his arm with the blankets toward Alfred for inspection. Alfred steps closer and then freezes. Alarmed, Victoria steps forward to crane her neck out of the tent and toward the blankets.

“She just appeared out of nowhere, sir,” Dade is saying as Victoria looks down toward the sleeping face of a pudgy cheeked newborn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 11.15.1777 This is the day the Articles of Confederation are approved by the second continental congress to be sent to the thirteen states for ratification. Sam sings Yankee Doodle to Sylvia; Yankee Doodle will eventually become the state anthem for Connecticut.  
> 12.16.1777 The first state ratifies the Articles of Confederation. The continental army is waiting to march to their winter encampment at Valley Forge. Samuel Dade is a soldier from Virginia (listed on page 84 of List of the revolutionary soldiers of Virginia. Special report of the Department of Archives and History for 1912


	5. Here's to the Damned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The army begins their encampment at Valley Forge and Victoria writes to Samantha, asking her to join them. Reunited again, the three siblings face enduring a harsh winter, new nation-states appearing, a Prussian General arriving to train their beleaguered army, and both Victoria and Samantha's heads are turned by quick smiling strangers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Victoria:: Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations / New England Colonies  
> Samantha "Sam":: Connecticut Colony / Middle Colonies  
> Sylvia:: New Connecticut  
> Alfred:: USA, canon Hetalia character / Southern Colonies  
> Chloe:: Commonwealth of Virginia  
> Alexander "Alex":: State of South Carolina  
> Thomas "Tom":: State of New York
> 
> CONTENT WARNING: February 5, 1778 until "With a hand over her forehead..."  
> Victoria is assisting with inoculation (the first form of vaccinations) wherein healthy soldiers were cut on the arm and had the bacteria from smallpox spread in the open cut. Historians credit this decision by General Washington as one of the major factors for the American army to have survived Valley Forge. Victoria references the inoculation once more as a passing line of dialogue.

**January 2, 1778** Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, United States

* * *

It had been a stressful three weeks since the child was handed over to Victoria and Alfred. They had to come clean to General Washington regarding their─ or soon to be lack of─ nationdom as Victoria would have had to leave the encampment as both pregnant women and new mothers did. A military encampment was also─ as both Washington, his advisors, Dade, and even Alfred, though the latter only mentioned it withdrawn brows and a frown on his lips─ not the proper place for a baby, nation status in question or not. 

Victoria refused to leave.

Alfred was no more willing to fight with her about it as, if they were certainly doomed, he also wanted her to be there with him when he succumbed. The only concession they both agreed on was the room within the General’s headquarters.

So Victoria and Alfred moved into Washington’s headquarters, which did nothing to hide why they had to move, as Dade and the rest of Alfred’s regiment had very loose lips. The child only revitalized and strengthened the old rumors about their relationship. As most of their army was made from the northern colonies, almost none aside from the intellectuals knew of Nations. Even the southern colonies had some confusion amongst their ranks as well and Alfred had not hidden away as she and Samantha had.

The most common and prevailing rumor was that she had been pregnant and due to the stress of the move, had given birth as they arrived in Valley Forge. She and Alfred apparently had married quickly before he enlisted and thus she followed him as their families did not approve of their marriage─ Victoria is willing to suspend her disbelief, but she was almost certain that married couples did not refer to their other as their brother or sister─ which worked in Victoria’s favor as a married woman having a child amid a war was only mildly frowned upon, but inevitable, while an unmarried woman, regardless of the timing of the birth, would be shunned, shamed, and have slurs slung at her and her child.

The rumors had even penetrated the other major-general’s and the doctors, though the latter was mostly due to the gossiping nurses than anything. Even those that knew of their Nation-status still attributed some credibility to the rumors of their unwavering love.

The only rumor she hasn’t heard making the rounds again was the old favorite before Alfred and his group merged with hers. But that’s not the point.

The point is that it wouldn’t be the first time two nations inadvertently created or raised their successor. But Alfred was the only one to feel the loss from the child’s birth, and Victoria was at a loss as to what _that_ meant.

So she wrote to Samantha.

And now she’s in the parlor of the headquarters waiting for Samantha’s horse to arrive, the baby asleep on her chest, Alfred out with their boys putting up huts.

The baby shifts and sighs just as Victoria spies a horse on its way to the front of the headquarters. Her sister is on the back, her old wool cloak wrapped tightly around her. Robert, the stable boy for the general, rushed out to meet her as Samantha seemed to be having trouble getting down herself. She takes Robert’s offered hand and swings herself down from the horse, a hand pressed to her chest. Samantha smiles quickly at the boy and then says something to him as she gestures to the heaving horse.

Robert nods and points toward the house. Samantha inclines her head toward him and walks toward the door. Before she can ring or knock, Victoria opens the door to let her in. Samantha whisks herself in through the door and Victoria shuts it quickly behind her.

For a moment they stare at each other.

Her sister is taller and her hair where it escapes her cap is a brighter red than the last time Victoria remembers seeing her, almost three years ago. Her eyes are still bright green, her cheeks full and flushed from the hard ride she just finished. She looks Victoria up and down just like Victoria does to her, but Victoria suddenly feels her lack of height and the weight she has lost in the past three years. She only bathed the other day when Hannah had pulled enough water for the household to bathe and even that wasn’t enough to get most of the dirt off.

Samantha grins.

“I’d love to greet you with a hug, sister, but it seems like we are both carrying precious cargo,” Samantha says as she dramatically pulls her cape aside to reveal the capped head of the mystery child.

Victoria rolls her eyes— about to make a joke at her sister's dramatic nature— when she sees the soft look Samantha is directing at the waking child wrapped to her chest. Sam's gloved hand lifts the wool hat off of the child and the other brushes the fine, curly blonde hair back. Her expression is fond and loving and Victoria feels the weight of the baby in her arms grow heavier. Sam looks up and sees her expression before Victoria can wrangle it into a semblance of control.

Sam’s forehead frowns. “What’s wrong?”

Victoria shakes her head. “Nothing that can’t keep.”

Samantha doesn’t like that answer, but she has no choice but to let Victoria get away with it as she marches down the hallway and further into the house, calling over her shoulder, “We are furloughed here with the General as Nations. We have a room on the second floor, and all five of us should fit. Not much in the way of beds, but we have two cots; should be enough for the children and us; Al mentioned he’d probably go out with his boys if we get too crowded. Ah, Hannah, this is my sister Samantha. A plate for her and her child for dinner, thank you.”

Hannah, who was sitting at the kitchen table shelling peas, stands and bows her head toward Samantha before standing to finish Victoria’s request. Samantha looks askance at Victoria and then slowly lowers herself down into the chair opposite Hannah at the table, a hand behind her slowly untying the now squirming bundle on her front. The child, once her legs are freed, pops up to look over Samantha’s shoulder.

The child bounces excitedly and slaps her small, chubby hand against Samantha’s shoulder. “Baby! Sam!”

Sam doesn’t turn. “Yes Sylvia, I see the baby. We can say hi after you eat some dinner.”

The child, Sylvia, keeps staring at the baby, even after a plate is placed in front of her and Sam. Sam assures Hannah that what she picked out is fantastic. Hannah also left a warmed bottle for the baby on the table. Victoria sits stiffly next to Samantha and nods toward Hannah to dismiss her before slowly and awkwardly shifting the baby, who woke up at some point and is staring up at Victoria with her big deep blue eyes, around so that she could feed her.

Sam doesn’t say anything, but she keeps watching Victoria out of the corner of her eye. Victoria bristles as the baby slowly eats and then when she raises the child to her shoulder to burp her.

“Baby name?”

Startled, Victoria looks at Sylvia, her cheeks bulging with the orange slice she is eating. Samantha raises an eyebrow at her surprise, but Victoria doesn’t look at her, just at the truly off-putting display of Sylvia chewing on the orange slice.

“Uh…She doesn’t have one,” Victoria says as the baby coughs once and then worms her arms under herself and pushes away from her shoulder. The baby doesn’t fall only because of Victoria’s hand on her back. The baby and Sylvia regard each other until, with a grunt, the baby falls back against Victoria’s shoulder.

“Why not?” Samantha asks.

Victoria stands and brings the empty bottle to the sink. “Al and I couldn’t agree on one.”

In truth, that had never come up between them. Once they got the baby, they were more concerned with taking down the camp, traveling, and setting up the encampment. And then Alfred has been busy with running field drills in anticipation of Prussia’s appearance in the coming weeks and Victoria has been helping the quartermaster and Hannah with distributing food and supplies. She’s anxious to go back helping in the hospitals, but she can’t with the baby.

There’s a tug on her dress and she looks down to see Sylvia’s gap-toothed smile. Sylvia raises her arms seeing that she has Victoria’s attention. Victoria looks up alarmed at Samantha who watches the exchange calmly. They make eye contact; Victoria pleading to Sam to do something. Sam rolls her eyes and finishes her last fire cake.

“Sylvie, Victoria can’t carry you and the baby. You have feet you can use. The baby doesn’t know how to walk yet.”

Sylvia twists to look at Sam and puts her arms on her hips. “No.”

“Oh yes, little lady.” Sam stands and moves her dishes to the sink beside Victoria. She copies Sylvia’s stance exaggeratedly.

“No Sam,” Sylvia says again.

“Yes, Sylvia.”

“You can hold my hand, if you’d like,” Victoria offers just as Sylvia stamps her foot onto the ground. Sylvia looks pleased by this concession and eagerly grabs Victoria’s free hand. Sam, when Victoria looks to her, winks once and then dusts her hands off.

“Which room did you say was ours?”

Victoria watches her walk back toward her seat, picking up her gloves as she does. “Upstairs, first room on the right.”

Sam fits her glove around her hand and smiles at Victoria. “Wonderful, could you mind Sylvia until I get back with our things?”

Her heart skips a beat and she opens her mouth to refute, but Samantha has already swept out of the room. Victoria looks slowly down at Sylvia. The child blinks up at her twice and then smiles. She bounces on her feet, tugging Victoria’s arm down violently.

The front door opens and shuts.

* * *

Victoria is not made out for motherhood.

She knows this especially well after being left with two children for only twenty minutes at best while Sam gathered her belongings.

Sam, when she did return, took pity on Victoria and took the children up to their room to settle them down for a nap, after wringing a promise that she would give Sam a tour of the grounds the next day.

As she stomps through the light dusting of snow on the ground, her heels crunching just as loud as the deep breaths she is taking, her breath hanging in the air before her, she’s also fighting back tears.

 _I’m just tired,_ she repeats to herself. She’s not angry that Sam seems to be doing just fine with Sylvia or that Sam has had it easy living back with their congress while she’s been watching her boys die, patching them up one night and bringing their body out to be buried the next. She _missed_ Samantha while they were separated, she could barely stand it. But now that she’s here—

Well.

She shakes the thought as she nods to a group of men standing outside of the hut Alfred’s boys had put up. They easily recognize her, and one turns into the hut to yell for Alfred, only to almost run smack into his chest.

Alfred grins at her, his cheeks apple red and blue eyes bright. He wipes something off of his hat and jams in on his head. “She here?”

She nods. “I left her and the baby back at the general’s headquarters.”

He raises his eyebrows and chin, surprise flitting across his face. “I suppose you’re escaping for one of your walks.”

Wary of the eyes on her, she forces a slightly mischievous smile to her lips. “I suppose.”

“Well, I should go and say hullo to her, shouldn’t I?” Alfred asks as he steps farther from the hut, doing nothing to shake the eyes on them. Camp scuttlebutt is always centered around them nowadays. “You’ll be back before dinner?”

“Or close to it,” she agrees. Alfred hesitates and she takes his hand and squeezes it once before stepping around him and continuing on her walk.

Alfred doesn’t approve of the walks. But he hasn’t tried to stop her since she stabbed him the one time he tried to. He believes the truth of the rumors that follow her walks and, admittedly, Victoria is hard-pressed to find major untruths in them she also sees where Alfred is coming from.

It won’t stop her.

Hasn’t stopped her.

She reaches the set up soon after— doubling back to throw Alfred off of her tail and cutting by the latrines even though the scent almost made her nauseous.

“So I heard you’ve had a tough two weeks,” a voice says from her left.

She turns, a smile spreading wide over her cheeks. “Abijah,” she greets, feeling miles lighter than she had before.

* * *

Samantha is sitting at the fire’s hearth with Sylvia asleep sprawled akimbo in her lap and the baby in a basket to her left. She looks up when Victoria enters and smiles before going back to braiding her long hair.

Victoria blinks and runs a hand under her cap on the short ends of her hair, still shorn short from when she was Victor.

Alfred is reading on their one bed, his reading glasses, which he doesn’t really need but thinks make him look older, are resting on his forehead. He doesn’t look up when she enters, only pointedly turns the page of his book in reproach of the late hour. Victoria ignores him as she sits down next to Samantha, warming her hands in the fire.

Samantha looks at her out of the corner of her eye. “And where have you been? Takin’ a tumble in the snow, dear sister?”

Victoria feels a grin fighting to rise, but Alfred snaps his book shut. “Samantha.”

Samantha turns over her shoulder to look at him. “Oh shush, Alfred. It’s not like she can catch a child.”

Alfred is turning an interesting red and purple color as he huffs and puffs. Victoria rolls her eyes. “Ignore him, Sam, he always puffs up like that about me.”

“Oh so this has been happening for a while then,” Sam laughs. Alfred splutters in the background.

“Almost a year,” Victoria says, a sly wicked grin on her lips. “And it’s much easier in the summer months, let me tell you—”

Alfred groans and dramatically opens his book again to flip through. “Must we talk about this on our first night together in three years?”

Samantha shrugs and runs a hand over Sylvia’s curls where the baby is sleeping. “Ok. Well, then, I was thinking about naming Baby Virginia Chloe.” When silence is her response, she continues, “I mean, we could just call her Virginia and no one would argue that validity. But I like Chloe. I was going to name Sylvia that, but the woman who found her beat me to it. If you guys were leaning toward Virginia instead, that’s fine. I like the sound of it, even though it might be a little on the nose-” here Sam laughs, her eyes flicking between the two frozen figures of her siblings “-we could call her Ginny or Gina. But Chloe was an epithet of Demeter, you know the Greek goddess of agriculture and I just thought—”

“What do you mean she’s Virginia?”

Sam stops short and stares at Alfred like he lost a few screws. She opens her mouth and then looks at Victoria. Victoria knows the blood has all left her face. Her stomach is churning. Is Sam really that naive? She can’t be; she lived past the other two colonies in her territory. She must know what this child meant for them all.

Sam’s eyebrows dig down toward her nose and she looks confused. “You said she was found in the barracks of Virginia soldiers…”

“How do you know she’s not just here to replace all of us?” Victoria clarifies. Alfred closes his book and joins them on the floor.

Sam looks between the two of them, her eyebrows climbing up her forehead. “Is this why the two of you have been so twitchy about her?”

“Sam,” Victoria manages. Sam’s mouth twists into a scowl. She shifts Sylvia more protectively in her arms.

“First of all, even if she was here to replace us, which she’s _not_ ,” Sam snaps, “she’s still a little girl who deserves a name and love, not just complacent care. Second, she’s not here to replace us. What did you think I’ve been doing in Philadelphia?”

Alfred and Victoria look at each other. The truthful, and most offensive answer, would be _nothing._ Sam back in the safe city, living it up with clean linens and a sturdy roof, had been one of their punching bags that they would beat on when defeated, disappointed, drunk, or disillusioned. Sam takes their non-answer as answer enough and her face twists in rage.

Bitingly, keeping her voice low only to keep their young wards asleep, Sam snarls, “I’ve been _working._ Fighting to get our lousy, irresponsible, spoiled, and disorganized congress to see sense. Did you know they weren’t going to put in the clause about our charters being taken away until I made them aware? I spent months— _months_!— watching over Sylvia, writing to you, and every day I went into that stuffy room and fought to keep us all alive. And not to mention that no one wanted to speak to a woman about these issues.”

Alfred clears his throat. “We just thought it was like you and the other Connecticuts'.”

Sam blinks at him for a moment. When she realizes Alfred’s logic, she clenches her jaw. “Well, it’s not. The State of Virginia ratified the Articles just before you wrote to me.” Victoria looks down at the pattern of her dress. She feels guilty in the face of Samantha’s anger. Sam continues, her throat tight, “I can’t believe you thought for even a moment that I would sit by or, worse, actively work for legislation that would lead to our deaths.”

She shifts Sylvia into an easier to carry hold, letting the child rest her head on her shoulder before she stands with more grace than Victoria thought possible. She rocks slightly, her dress sweeping the floor, as she crosses to the second cot. Without looking at the two of them, Sam softly says, “The articles aren’t making us all merge together under one nation. It’s more like an agreement to be together. Like a _family_.”

Victoria flinches.

“I’m tired. Good night.”

The candles nearest Samantha whisk out.

* * *

 **February 5, 1778** Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, United States

* * *

Inoculation is the worst practice Victoria has had to assist with.

She cuts the arm of the soldier in front of her; three quick cuts parallel. Then she steps back and watches the doctor spread the puss from an infected soldier into the cuts. The soldier hisses at the press of the cold knife on the cuts. His eyes screw uptight. Victoria’s hands find the pile of clean bandages, unconsciously, and she starts to unwind a bandage.

The doctor steps away and she steps forward, winding the bandage around the upper arm and tying it off. Victoria helps the soldier replace his shirt and stand from the table. She shadows his steps out of the tent and squints out at the sun. There is a line of men to her right, the General’s quarters up the hill to her left, and various men walking in the path in front of them. Victoria wipes her hands on her apron and looks again toward the house and sees a small figure racing toward her.

With a hand over her forehead, Victoria squints at the small figure that resolves into Sylvia. Victoria’s eyebrows shoot up.

“I’ll be right back,” Victoria says to no one in particular and steps out from the tent and toward Sylvia.

Sylvia sees her and starts running faster over the muddy, uneven path, her little arms clutching something as she runs. Victoria catches up with her and the child barely pauses before flinging herself up into Victoria’s arms.

Victoria cradles the child close to her, one hand on the back of Sylvia’s neck, the other under her bottom. Sylvia is shaking and breathing shakily in Victoria’s ear. She goes almost boneless in Victoria’s hold before suddenly shooting up, almost smacking Victoria’s chin. “Iddy! Iddy! Al!” she babbles her substitute for Victoria and Alfred’s names.

Victoria frowns and looks over where Sylvia had come running from. Baby Chloe had gotten colicky in the middle of the night so Alfred had taken Sylvia with him to let Sam give her full attention to the baby. Victoria was supposed to get Sylvia from Alfred just before drills, but it was still early.

Sylvia keeps babbling and Victoria responds in affirmation like Sam told her she was supposed to with a baby. Victoria shifts Sylvia higher up into her arms and starts walking toward where she knows Alfred should be. Sylvia, annoyed with her guardian’s lack of appropriate response to her thrilling story, smacks Victoria in the face with the glove she is holding in her hand.

“Sylvia,” Victoria scolds, taking the glove from her.

“No,” Sylvia enunciates.

Victoria stares at the glove. It’s Alfred’s; specifically the matching pair to the one she keeps tucked into her lower pocket. The one they promised— 

“Sylvia,” Victoria says urgently, hugging her tighter as she picks up her pace. “Where’s Alfred?”

“Go ‘Ia. Al says ‘lina,” Sylvia dutifully recites. “‘Rolina. Peas.”

“Good job Sylvia,” Victoria rewards her as she abruptly changes course, running through the space between two huts. _Carolina_. Most of the regiments from the southern department remained in the south for the winter, but there were regiments from North Carolina settled in next to the 6th Virginia Regiment.

The ground is an uneven mess of frozen mud and melted puddles as Victoria runs. The medical tent she was in isn’t that far from the barracks of the North Carolina regiments and once she reaches there, it’s easy to find Al standing in a buzzing crowd of disheveled soldiers. Including, Victoria notes with surprise, the aide sent from the South Carolina and Georgia regiments in the south department. The aide is flustered, his hands waving around his head as he paces in front of Alfred.

She starts pushing through the throng; a few of the soldiers recognize her and start to move themselves to make it easier for her to pass. Alfred turns to her just as she breaks the ring, the aide stalling at her arrival, zeroing in on the child on her hip.

Alfred has a stupid grin on his face and his coat is off of his shoulders. Victoria opens her mouth to scold him— for sending his danger warning when he is whole and hale, for scaring Sylvia and Victoria, and for not wearing his jacket in negative degree weather— but hesitates so she can decide which one to be her opening argument, and then registers the baby swaddled in her brother’s jacket.

“Sisters!” Alfred greets and the clamoring crowd quiets. “We have a new addition!”

* * *

 **February 6, 1778** Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, United States

* * *

Victoria took the early morning shift of watching Chloe, so she’s dozing in the old, creaky rocking chair when Samantha sits up in a fit, swearing loudly.

Alfred has starfished out in her absence and the newly dubbed Alex is sleeping in Chloe’s basket between the two beds, Alfred’s hand on his stomach. They hadn’t had much luck finding a second basket for Alex, but it was no matter since Chloe was refusing to sleep in the basket. They had sent an aide out to the farmhouses housing their generals to see if any of them had one to spare. Sylvia is a cuddled lump next to Samantha’s stretched out figure and the two of them are breathing deep and easy. Chloe is fussing quietly on Victoria’s chest, having just settled down after her latest crying fit.

Samantha had handed her off to Victoria and fell asleep immediately while Victoria only sleepily took the crying baby and started to rock her.

The sun has been up for a while now, but Victoria knows not to wake Alfred or Samantha until the sun hits her eyes from where she is sitting. By that time Hannah would have fixed up breakfast and the soldiers and medical teams would be ready to start inoculating again.

Victoria shudders at the thought and Chloe coos and works her hand tighter at Victoria’s nightgown’s neckline.

Then Sam sits straight up in bed and swears, “Jesus Christ!” at the top of her lungs.

Victoria almost jumps out of her skin and abruptly stops rocking. Chloe whines at the noise and the sudden stop of motion. Alfred stirs, Alex remains asleep, and Sylvia doesn’t seem to react. Victoria stares at Sam, waiting for an explanation.

Sam’s face is screwed uptight, like Chloe’s when she’s passing gas, and she suddenly releases a big gust of air and flops back on the cot. If it weren’t for the quiet, “God,” that passes her lips, Victoria would have thought Sam was asleep again.

“Sam?” Victoria asks, bewildered.

Samantha rolls up and shifts to get out of bed. Her eyes are half-lidded as she shoves her stocking feet into Alfred’s boots. Everything is quiet as Sam pulls her woolen dress over her head and ties her hair up underneath her cap. She winces as she works, holding her stomach gingerly.

“Where are you going?” Victoria demands. They had a chamberpot, it’s not like Sam has to use the latrines.

Sam clasps her cloak around her throat and smiles tightly, still in pain. “I’m headed over to the New York regiments.”

Victoria raises an eyebrow. “D’you think they have a good breakfast?”

Sam laughs quietly, more a huff of laughter than anything. “I reckon I won’t need to stay that long.”

So not a social call then, though early morning calls to regiments of men weren’t really Sam’s style.

Sam taps the side of her nose. “I think it’ll be a girl this time. We seem to have good luck.”

The door shuts quietly after her exit and Victoria blinks once before she understands.

Well, fuck. They’re going to need a lot more baskets.

* * *

“I think Ben is a good name.”

“We are not naming the new child after your paramour, Samantha.”

“I never— Ben is a happily married man!”

“We’re not naming him after your childhood crush then.”

“My childhood crush was named Joseph, for your information. Ben is a good name!”

“No, you named Chloe and Alfred named Alex. I get to name this one.”

“I think if you find the baby then you get to name it.”

“I’m sorry, when did you find Chloe?”

* * *

 **February 23, 1778** Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, United States

* * *

Victoria had barely slept, and this time it wasn’t because of the new babies. With the dawn came her and Samantha struggling to brush their hair neat, wash their faces in the frozen basin, and put on the dresses they had scrubbed viciously last night while caring for the four young children. Thomas, at least, was the quietest, and Alex was content to be nestled in Alfred’s arms while the latter shaved and half-heartedly brushed his hair. Chloe and more importantly Sylvia found the whole ordeal that was stealing their guardian’s attention more than a little annoying and were loudly proclaiming their dislike all through the act of getting ready and when they were left with Hannah for the day.

They had agreed, in that roundabout way Alfred, Sam, and Victoria always employed, that the children would not be paraded in front of their new and esteemed guests, and even that their existence would be hidden as best as they were able to hide it. Alfred, gesturing with the polish for his boots, pointed out that the babies were significantly more vulnerable than them and if the Prussian envoy turned out to be less than friendly, they wouldn’t be able to attack the children.

The presentation of their small, meager, and undisciplined army is embarrassing, especially in the light of the early day. The three of them are in the welcoming group, along with General Washington, so they rush past their barefoot and freezing men, some wrapped in blankets instead of proper coats. Victoria turns her head, scanning the faces until she finds Abijah in the middle of the crowd. He doesn't see her— or at least she doesn't think he does. But it's okay because General Washington is still lecturing on von Steuben and his guests.

Alfred's place, normally when they do a presentation of arms, is beside the rest of the generals and she stands with the General's household. Today, the three of them have their rank to present as. Rumor from Boston says that von Steuben is accompanied by his own nation and thus the nations of the Americas should also be presented to von Steuben as a representation of their right as a nation. Privately, Victoria thinks it's twaddle. If she were a singular nation, she would not leave to go help a ragtag army and instead let her people do the helping.

So she, Sam, and Alfred are standing at attention to the right of General Washington when von Steuben's party arrives.

The bark of a dog, short and loud, comes first and, as one, all heads in the army swivel toward the sound. A group of five men, accompanied by an aide from Washington's household and the General himself, are walking toward them.

At their helm is the Baron, Friedrich von Steuben.

He is tall, his figure imposing as he walks with purpose toward General Washington. He has large gun holsters on his sides that sway with promise as he steps; he looks like a god of war, his chest decorated in medals. As he steps on the platform, Victoria feels the thud of his feet like an echo in her chest.

Samantha stiffens, reaching one hand back to Victoria. Victoria takes it, pressing their palms together, hidden in the folds of their dresses. Alfred puffs up to attention as the General and the Baron's party arrange themselves on the platform.

Formally, the party is greeted and the army is presented. Victoria can't pause in staring at von Steuben to glance at the army to her right.

"And may I make known to you," the General begins, sweeping one arm dramatically toward the line of Victoria, Samantha, and Alfred, "the United States of America."

The army is silent beside them and all three pull their shoulders back. They practiced this moment since von Steuben arrived in New Hampshire. They are also being presented formally to their people for the first time.

"Alfred Jones, of the Southern States. Samantha Jones, of the Middle States. And Victoria Jones, of the New England States."

The Baron grins warmly as the three of them bow and curtsey in turn-- shallowly, too low, Victoria knew, and they would be disregarding their own right. He then turns and copies the same gestures as the General, this time aimed at the man to his right. He speaks first in German and then in French. _"Darf ich Ihnen Das Volk die Königreich Preußen vorstellen. I present to you Gilbert Beilschmidt, the Kingdom of Prussia."_

 _Königreich Preußen_ stands at attention next to the Baron. His skin is pale, his hair sun-bleached, and his eyes looked dark, but not brown, like the color Thomas' eyes were slowly changing to. He is as smartly dressed as his Baron, power thrums off of him in waves. If the Baron was the ancient God of War, this was the God of Death.

And then he smiles and Victoria blinks in surprise at the well-worn smile lines on his face. Samantha grips her hand tighter.

The Baron is honored as a temporary inspector general and the procession is dismissed. The General and the Baron turn to inspect the troops and their housing. From here the three of them were going to return to their normal duties: Alfred with the other major-generals; Victoria in the medical tents; Samantha back with the children. But now that there is _Königreich Preußen_ to worry about, they hesitate.

 _Königreich Preußen_ speaks quietly to the Baron's aide-de-camp and his Secretary before splitting off from his party and approaching them.

 _"Hallo,"_ he greets, a hand on his chest and an incline of his head.

 _"Es ist mir eine Ehre, Sie kennenzulernen,"_ Samantha says in response, bowing her head. _"_ _Ich spreche Deutsch und wir sprechen alle Französisch."_

 _Königreich Preußen_ smiles and turns to regard Alfred and Victoria as well. _"Hello,"_ he greets in French, his heavy German accent grounding the light syllables. _"I am the nation of Prussia, you may call me Gilbert."_

Alfred has his hands clasped behind his back and he smiles up at Gilbert, his chin lifted high. The morning sun cuts through his gold hair, framing his face in a halo of sorts. Victoria stares at the image; Gilbert in full military dress, his shoes shined, every button pristine, looking every inch the powerful nation next to Alfred in his tattered coat, torn pants, and half-destroyed shoes. His socks, at least, cover his toes where they peek out of his boots. 

_“It’s an honor to meet you,”_ Alfred says in French, holding one hand out for Gilbert to shake.

Gilbert takes the hand, pumping it perfunctorily once, his smile deepening the lines on his face. _“I heard from Francis that you have some amazing strength. You better watch that; my military training is very tough !”_

Alfred visibly doesn’t know what to say to that so he only nods absently. Gilbert turns to Victoria and Samantha. He inclines his head to Victoria quickly then turns to Samantha. His smile ticks up at the corner and he nods again. _“Frauleins .”_

Gilbert claps a hand against Alfred’s shoulder and turns him toward where the party of leaders had disappeared a moment or two ago. His arm is slung over Alfred’s shoulder as he pulls him in close, talking loudly in French as they go.

Samantha stands frozen, staring after the duo, even when Victoria steps away from her, ready to go back to work. Victoria stops after she looks at her face.

Victoria and Samantha had lived together for eighty years with very little outside interaction and there are just some things you can’t avoid hiding after all of those years.

“Samantha Jones,” Victoria says aghast. “Are you serious?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2.2.1778 Sexuality in colonial America was a very different beast than sexuality is regarded today. There are multiple studies about early sexuality (in terms of heterosexual expression; non-heterosexual expression is a conversation for a different chapter) in the colonies and are a very interesting read. The basic idea is that in New England it was not uncommon for couples to be expecting children when they were getting married; premarital sex was not embraced by society but also not stigmatized, outside of the settlements of Puritans (a la The Scarlet Letter). So the idea is that Samantha and Victoria, as assumedly immortal beings, have a very relaxed view of having sex with other people. Conversely, in the Southern colonies where white girls' purity was a point of pride in white male honor so sexual activity was stigmatized and associated with the "lower sort" or indentured servitude. With that in mind, Alfred would have very traditional disgust and aversion to talking about sexual activity. (Source: Doing the Nasty in Colonial America)  
> 2.23.1778 the Baron von Steuben did not speak English, but he spoke German and French, the latter he used to communicate with the army generals when running drills. General Washington, due to his uneducated roots, did not speak French. Victoria, Sam, and Alfred learned French as many of the American scholars did (John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, most notably).  
> GERMAN translations (as best a non-native speaker can determine from various translation tools):  
> Darf ich Ihnen Das Volk die Königreich Preußen vorstellen:: May I introduce them [Alfred, Samantha, and Victoria] to the people of the Kingdom of Prussia.  
> Es ist mir eine Ehre, Sie kennenzulernen:: It is an honor to meet you  
> Ich spreche Deutsch und wir sprechen alle Französisch:: I speak German and we all speak French.  
> Frauleins:: Miss (used in context like Mademoiselle or Ladies)
> 
> This is really a part one of two (or maybe three... I have a lot of ideas for Valley Forge and I think Sam and Alfred also deserve their own time to speak) and was originally going to be one full chapter, but I am going to be busy with Life Things in the next three weeks (much like I have been) so I thought it best to update now!


	6. To the Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alfred's and the army's training begins in earnest, and Alfred can barely stop moving long enough to take a breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alfred:: USA, canon Hetalia character  
> Samantha "Sam":: Connecticut Colony / Middle Colonies  
> Sylvia:: New Connecticut  
> Victoria:: Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations / New England Colonies  
> Chloe:: Commonwealth of Virginia  
> Alexander "Alex":: State of South Carolina  
> Thomas "Tom":: State of New York  
> Morgan:: State of Georgia  
> Taylor:: State of New Hampshire  
> Paige:: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania  
> Owen:: Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Southern)  
> Sarah:: Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Northern)
> 
> Mentioned:  
> Katerine:: Colony of Maryland (named after the first wife of Henry VII as Maryland was a religious haven in the New World for Catholics)  
> Peregrine:: Colony of Massachusetts  
> Hannah:: Colony of Pennsylvania

**February 26, 1778** Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, United States

* * *

Alfred has not gotten better at sneaking since he tried to leave the apartment he and Samantha shared. So, when he unobtrusively─ by his standards, which could be classified closer to a toddler with a handful of extra cookies─ edges out of the training grounds, his personal trainer follows him.

Which is a big problem since he was sneaking to get to Samantha.

Who is carrying Sylvia.

 _“Hello,”_ Sam greets Alfred and Beilschmidt as though the biggest secret they're hiding is not chewing at the ribbons of her cape, settled contentedly in Sam's arms. 

_“Fraulein,”_ Beilschmidt greets as Sylvia whines and reaches out to Alfred.

“Cate asked me to watch over her, would you mind taking her for an hour?” Sam says as she transfers Sylvia’s weight so she doesn’t accidentally fall to the ground in her eagerness to get to Alfred. Her eyebrows raise with this not-really-request.

Cate Greene, the newly arrived wife of Nathanael Greene, has consented to be their scapegoat mother in the case of their guests discovering Sylvia. The other children are still young enough that they can’t really get around by themselves, but Sylvia has proved to be an epic escape artist. Though, to blatantly bring her to the training field to hand off supervision is probably not a good reason to have to use their alibi.

Regardless, Alfred nods and holds his hands out for Sylvia. “Hi Sylvie!” he cooes, lifting her above his head.

She kicks his chin. “Alf’d,” she grins as he settles her back on his side.

 _“Wir haben genug Zeit, um eine Pause zu machen,”_ Beilschmidt says to Samantha. He then turns to grin at Sylvia, who is overcome with shyness and hides her face in Alfred’s coat. _“Let us lunch and I’ll see you back here in about an hour, huh Jones?”_

 _“Oui,”_ Alfred says, rocking Sylvia for a moment before bidding a strategic retreat from Samantha and Beilschmidt.

His arms are rubbery after running the drills so he swings Sylvia up onto his shoulders, which she greatly enjoys since Samantha won’t do it with her, and Victoria is almost a good foot shorter than him.

He’s almost curious who is watching the rest of the children since he knows Victoria was up early to work with their doctors, both inoculating and also helping rearrange the camp. It’s probably Cate or Hannah or one of the other women in the house aside from Mrs. Washington unless she decided she wanted to dote on two newborns and a colicky, easily annoyed baby. 

_“Tapent, tapent,”_ Sylvia repeats as she pats Alfred’s head a little too hard to be called soft. “Patty-cake, patty-cake. _Tapent mains._ Patty-cake.”

“Baker’s man,” Alfred reminds her in a singsong. Sylvia pauses in her tapping to bounce her heels against his chest.

 _“Tapent ,”_ she repeats.

─ _“Tapent, tapent, petites mains,”_ New France whisper-sings as he plays quietly with his bear by the hearth as Alfred pretends to work on his sums at the table. _"_ _Tourne, tourne, joli moulin. Nage, nage- ”_

There’s the click of the door handle turning and Alfred folds the letter he was drafting into his waistcoat and waits until he can hear Arthur’s steps in the hall before finishing the last problem set. The math is perfect, he has always had a head for it. He stretches his arms above his head and loudly sighs in relief.

“Is that patty-cake, you’re playing, Mattie?” Alfred asks as he stands and kneels beside New France. The boy looks up, startled. He doesn’t know a lot of English, but he’s slowly learning given Arthur’s insistence on no French in the house when he is around. Matthew nods when Alfred demonstrates the hand motions.

Arthur walks right past them and to the table to look over Alfred’s work. Alfred starts to quietly play patty-cake with Matthew, even as he starts to bristle deep down inside himself at the scrutinizing Arthur was giving his work.

“Your penmanship could use some work,” Arthur grunts as he looks up from the table. He then frowns. “America, where is your suit?”

“Hanging up in my room,” Alfred challenges. He hates that suit; it’s stiff and uncomfortable.

Arthur’s nose twists in irritation and his eyebrows drawn down over his nose. “Go get dressed, we have a dinner to attend tonight as soon as Miss Ellen is here.”

Alfred groans and stands. He sloughs off to his room and quickly tucks the letter into the chest below his bed. The key to it remains on the necklace around his neck that he tucks beneath the suit.

Miss Ellen is in the kitchen and Arthur is nowhere to be found when Alfred bounds down again, which means Arthur is impatiently waiting in the carriage. Alfred detours quickly to ruffle Matthew’s hair.

 _“Don’t grow up,"_ he says with a wink before leaving the house─

Alfred shakes his head and rolls his shoulders, shaking off the phantom memory and forgetting the precious cargo he was carrying. Sylvia squeaks in laughter regardless, but Alfred's body is aching from the rigorous training Beilschmidt and his baron have been enforcing in addition to the old aches and pains from his patriots on a daily basis.

He doesn't realize he lost feeling in lower legs and feet until he steps with his left leg again. Shooting pins and needles travel up his leg; the sensation steals his breath for a quick, terrifying second. His knee buckles and he stumbles on shaking legs with Sylvia laughing all the while.

Alfred almost drops her as he bends over to breathe harshly, tucking her under his arm on his hip. Now she quiets, watching him intently.

The feeling fades. Though his knees still knock together as he straightens up.

Sylvia places her mittened hand on his cheek. "Al?"

He blows a puff of air in her face. "I'm okay, Sylvie, see?"

She laughs again and he grins as they continue their walk with more purpose and a clear destination this time.

Sam had told them after they had found Thomas that she felt it in her chest, but not her heart or head which told her it was New York, not Connecticut or Pennsylvania. They probably also functioned the same, though none of the New England states had arrived yet, so they were unsure if Victoria worked like that, but Alfred had agreed that he had felt the loss of South Carolina and Virginia in two different parts of his body.

"We're gonna go see Georgia, isn't that exciting," Alfred tells Sylvia, stretching his mouth into a big grin as he struggles to remember where the aide from the southern army has been spending his time.

"Eggs-i-ting," Sylvia agrees. "A baby?"

"Yes there is a baby," Alfred says as he glances down the huts toward where he had found Alex. There's no increase in activity, just the regular soldiers mulling around the area. Same with the officer tents. "Somewhere."

Alfred swings Sylvia up onto his shoulders again, telling her to be a lookout. She proceeds to continue playing patty-cake with the top of his head. They spend a good amount of time wandering amongst the lunching soldiers and Alfred's stomach starts rumbling. He's considering passing the whole ordeal off as a figment of his imagination so he can eat his cold lunch when Sylvia screams.

"Vivie!" Sylvia yells, jabbing her heels into Alfred's chest.

Victoria is ahead of them, talking sternly to the aide Alfred was looking for, who looks rather flustered and is waving his arms around his head as he gesticulates wildly. There is a soldier standing behind Victoria, the sight of whom makes Alfred's stomach curdle.

Victoria hears Sylvia shriek and she looks up, sparing the man in front of her another moment of her glare. She smiles and waves them over.

"Alfred," she greets, "I was just telling Henry here that a matter of _national security_ means that he cannot go blabbing around the camp and stirring up unwanted _international_ attention."

"There is no way that child is actually a member of our esteemed nation," Henry sneers, pointing toward Victoria's shadow holding a bundle that Alfred easily recognizes as a baby. "It's reprehensible to be represented by such a─"

Victoria shoves the point of her dagger under the aide's chin, her lips pulled back into a sneer. "I'll thank you to not talk about my sister that way."

Alfred clears his throat.

"If need be, we can make it into a duel," Victoria challenges, pushing closer to Henry. He takes a step back.

Alfred steps closer, blocking most of the action. They don't need the rumors spreading that Victoria is threatening their patriots.

Again.

"Victoria," he says. "I'm sure Mr. Shute understands our need for discretion and as a patriot, he understands that our national security needs every protection he can offer. We should really let the gentleman return to his business." Henry looks gratefully at Alfred as he backs up from Victoria. Victoria sheathes the dagger, frowning after the retreating figure.

She spits on the ground. "The next time we execute defectors, we should put him in the line of fire. Good riddance, I say!"

Alfred sighs, ignoring that last proclamation. "Hello Victoria, I see you have found our missing sibling."

Victoria's face is still twisted nastily as she raises an eyebrow at him. "How long were you looking?"

"Almost my whole lunch break," Alfred says mournfully.

Victoria rolls her eyes. "Abijah and I found her about ten minutes ago when word reached the hospital because Henry wouldn't shut up about her."

"Ah," Alfred says and turns to nod in thanks to the soldier behind Victoria. "Lieutenant."

"Major General," Abijah says, smiling slightly.

Alfred feels a trickling sensation flow down his spine and he grimaces as he focuses back on Victoria─ who is not even trying to hide her delight at his discomfort. "Are you done for the day?"

"Yes," Victoria answers. "But you're not. Come here, Sylvia." She holds her hands out for the child and Alfred lifts her over his head and passes her to Victoria. "How did she end up with you, anyway?"

"Sam seemed like she needed a break," Alfred says, rolling his shoulders.

Victoria pauses in smiling at Sylvia. "A break?" she asks. "What, she brought Sylvia down to the training fields to get Prussia's attention?"

"No. Just my attention. Beilschmidt just followed me when I went to go talk to her."

Abijah chokes on a laugh and Alfred's spine straightens. Victoria's sleazy smile is wicked when he looks at her. His cheeks start to heat up. "I'm going to eat lunch," he says a handful of decibels louder than before, swooping in to kiss Sylvia and then Victoria on the cheek. "Bye Sylvie, bye Vicky!"

He bids a strategic retreat to Victoria loudly telling Sylvia that her older brother is an idiot.

* * *

"I think Morgan is a good name."

"It's a girl, Alfred."

"I am aware of what constitutes a boy and a girl, thank you Sam. Morgan like Murigen."

"You want to name her after Ireland?"

"She doesn't look anything like Murigen."

"Why does _that_ matter, Victoria?"

* * *

 **March 4, 1778** Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, United States

* * *

Sam comes down with the cough that had been bothering Chloe just a few weeks ago. Victoria has taken to not spending the night in their house just from fear that the contamination is stemming from her work at the hospital. Because of that, Alfred has been up most nights with the kids and then running to training in the morning. And today, Alfred had been late because Chloe had started screaming, which started Thomas. And Victoria was late to take over─ for some reason that probably was due to that _soldier_. This meant that Alfred didn't get to break his fast and instead ran all the way to the fields to find them already running drills. Causing Beilschmidt to keep him past when the sun went down.

_"Are you going to tell me why you were late, Jones?"_

_"No sir ."_

_"Hmm, more's the pity. Ten more times."_

Alfred reloads his rifle and aims at the target, rolling with the kick of the butt of the gun. All other soldiers have cleared the fields, throwing sympathetic looks Alfred's way as they left. Even Baron von Stueben has left, chuckling and clapping a hand to Beilschmidt's shoulder as he went. His stomach rumbles loudly and his arms shake on his sixth repetition.

Beilschmidt pokes him in between his shoulder blades. _"Keep your focus. What was it you were calling yourselves?"_

_"The United States."_

_"Fun name. Shame you'll never get there if you keep up acting like Arthur's doormat."_

There's a loud crack, not any different than the earlier gunshots. But now Alfred and Beilschmidt stare down the target range at the fallen target.

 _"Nun, das ist eine Art, es zu tun,"_ Beilschmidt mutters under his breath, rubbing his chin almost thoughtfully. _"Dismissed."_

 _"Thank you, sir,"_ Alfred bites out watching the other man march off of the field. His eyes droop with his shoulders as a wave of exhaustion rolls over him. He trudges over to the fallen target.

When he returns back to their rooms, Samantha is missing and all of the children he remembers are sprawled on her cot. Victoria is asleep in the rocking chair, a baby-shaped lump on her chest. He stalks past her to the banked fire and picks up the water pitcher before heading to the window. Victoria stirs when he pulls his now soaking head back through the window. She frowns at him with one eye open as he returns the empty water pitcher.

He raises an eyebrow at her and then down at the child on her chest.

She grunts and resettles herself. "Her name is Taylor."

Alfred nods and collapses in his cot.

* * *

Alfred is already humming a minuet in the carriage to the ball. Katherine, next to him, is sitting stiffly in the dress Arthur had given her for her birthday ball last year. It's a desperate bid to appeal herself to Arthur in the light of her recent rebellion.

Arthur had barely spared her a glance in between scolding Alfred for not polishing his dancing shoes prior to Arthur's arrival.

Even now, in the carriage where arguably Arthur has to work not to pay attention to the two of them, Arthur pulled out a stack of letters and was shifting through them.

Katherine is blinking rapidly in her seat.

Alfred's whistling peeters out. His good mood is buoyed, however, by their entrance into the hall, seeing the bright lights and the warm-up of the string players.

The two of them follow Arthur to Alfred's acting governor and they bow, though Arthur's is more of an incline forward. Nathaniel Bacon, the senior, bows to Arthur and nods to Alfred. His wife Elizabeth curtseys low to Arthur and Alfred and smiles politely at Katherine.

With a look over his shoulder at the two of them, Arthur dismisses them. Katherine glides on Alfred's arm as they make their way around the room. Alfred hates this part of the dances, but Katherine is determined to remain in Arthur's good graces so she doesn't let him skive on introductions until they hear the call to start the French dancing.

Arthur, by virtue of being a stick in the mud, is not dancing and Nathaniel Bacon as the host is not dancing, leaving Alfred as the highest-ranking gentleman in the place. Katherine, as a visiting dignitary, is technically the highest-ranking lady, followed by Bacon's wife, Elizabeth, and his niece, Abigail Smith Burwell, who both are not dancing─ Abigail as she has just given birth recently and Elizabeth because she is tired. As Katherine is his sister, they aren't dancing together. That honor goes to Abigail's oldest daughter, Joanna Burwell.

Joanna is a sweet girl and Alfred doesn't have to fight to keep his smile on his face as they dance in circles around each other. She's a truly fantastic dancer, just as well as her mother was at her age. And she knows that he's not open to courtship, but as they circle and clasp hands quickly, he knows her sure footing is a performance for those watching. As they clear the floor to the polite claps of the assembled audience, Alfred grins brightly.

Joanna remains on his arm as Alfred takes his place next to a bemused Arthur. Arthur shakes his head at Alfred's ill-disguised glee at his wonderful dancing partner before nodding to the curtseying Joanna. Alfred can't help it─ most of the time he never gets a dancer like Joanna and he's excited for the country dances later in the night.

Katherine is dancing with Joanna's father, Lewis Burwell. Her steps are perfect and her deep blue dress floats and sways with her. Her dark hair sparkles in the candlelight and Alfred can't stop grinning, watching her charm the head of his most influential family. He looks at Arthur as their dance slowly ends, grinning in pride, expecting even Arthur to have gotten over his sour feelings toward Katherine.

Arthur's frown is severe and he glares across the dance floor at Katherine. A chilling feel squeezes down to Alfred's stomach. He knows that look.

When Alfred wakes up, Samantha is leaning over him, frowning, and it's not the first time he's noticed how much she looks like Arthur.

The space behind his breastbone aches suddenly with missing his sisters.

* * *

That day, Alfred is blessedly on time. Unfortunately, this does nothing to improve Beilschmidt's opinion of him.

 _"Faster,"_ the man bites out as Alfred charges at the practice dummies with his bayonet.

Alfred's lungs are heaving and he feels just shy of breathing blood. He wants nothing more than to collapse, especially as with every gasping breath he tastes the thawing waste from the winter. He almost gags when the wind changes and the smell of the new latrines drags itself through the camp.

 _"So I heard something interesting from your sister last night,"_ Beilschmidt says, frowning down at where Alfred has collapsed in a heap during their ten-minute break. " _Apparently, she wrote that note to Arthur telling him to fuck off and kiss her ass, not you._ "

" _Are you talking about the Declaration_?"

Beilschmidt ignores him. _"And Victoria rode out of an occupied Boston to rouse her patriots in the countryside."_ Beilschmidt squats so he can glare with his freaky red eyes straight into Alfred's own. _"So I guess, what I'm getting at,"_ he grins, looking like a cat playing with a cornered mouse, _"is what have you done?"_

* * *

He got a print of the engraving in the mail, tucked in between the pages of the letter from Paul. Gage's letter, probably detailing the exact same incident, is laying at his elbow unread as of yet. His hands shake.

He had known it was getting worse in Boston, had been getting more urgent letters from Paul and the other Sons of Liberty, and the reports Gage would send had barely touched on dissent between his people and Arthur's soldiers, which all stunk of a commander trying to cover his tracks.

Five dead and six wounded.

He burns the letter from Paul─ he has to if Arthur finds anything other than the financial reports from the colonial legislatures, he'll be subjected to a long conversation about mortality and Alfred's responsibility as a colony of the Great British Empire at best and at worst, Arthur will know Alfred hasn't been buying his happy colony stories and he might just unravel everything Alfred has spent the past five years building and hiding.

He needs to burn the engraving. He's seated beside the fire, staring at the straight line of bayonets and the dead colonists being dragged out of frame. His hand traces the red pooling below the head of one of his people, dead at the hands of Arthur's people, and then the red on the coats. _Lobsterbacks,_ Paul had called them in the letter.

Alfred had last seen that coat wrapped around Arthur in the command tent, pouring over a map with his closest advisors. He had seemed so poised and in control, and Alfred had ached with wanting to be just like him.

Alfred tore the engraving print in half and then once again. With a deep breath, he threw the paper into the fire, standing abruptly as the flames licked across the edges.

Mattie was standing in the doorway of the room, staring up at Alfred with his big purple eyes.

"Matthew," Alfred said.

"Alfred," he responded in kind, leaning a little to see past Alfred. And, God help him, Alfred can't stop himself from shifting the hide the blazing fire in the grate. Mattie paused and looked at Alfred again, stubbornly keeping his eyes on him. "I had a question."

Matthew's English had progressed with the years he had spent with Alfred, growing just as rapidly as he did in age and height. Alfred nods. "Okay, let's go into the kitchen."

Mattie nodded and turned around. Alfred tucked the letter from Gage, still unopened, into his jacket pocket. Mattie was seated at their large kitchen table when Alfred walked into the room.

Sitting across from him, Alfred laced his fingers together, amused when Mattie copied his posture. "What did you want to talk about?"

Mattie chewed his lip for a moment before he leaned forward more, "Arthur called you something last time he was here."

"He calls me a lot of things, most commonly 'Alfred', 'America', and─"

"It was a new name," Mattie interrupted. "He called you 'Royal Colonies'."

Alfred stilled. Arthur had indeed called him that─ the old title slipped out during one of their arguments and Alfred had been so stunned that he had stopped arguing and instead stared open-mouthed at Arthur as he finished his lecture. "He did. What is your question?"

"Why did he call you that?"

"I don't know the inner-workings of Arthur's mind," Alfred attempted to brush the question off.

Matthew scowled. "Please don't lie to me. I thought we were brothers."

Stunned, for the second time, Alfred shut his mouth and looked down. Matthew continued to talk in the silence. "I guess what I meant was why did you react the way you did?"

"It's an old title," Alfred admitted. "Like how you are─ were New France."

 _"Nouvelle-France,"_ Mattie nodded his understanding.

Alfred nodded as well, biting at his lip, thinking of a way to word what he was trying to say. "There were three kinds of colonies, when Arthur first started to explore my territory: charter; proprietary; royal. Each proprietary and charter colony had its own representative. The royal colonies were all," here he spread his hands wide, "under me. So I was the Royal Colonies for about eighty years. Now I'm the American Colonies."

Mattie looked thoughtful as he nodded his understanding. His eyebrows dipped toward the center of his forehead. "You said the other kinds of colonies had other representatives, are they like us?"

Ah. "Yes, they were."

Mattie looked sharply at Alfred. "What happened to them?"

Alfred didn't say anything for a moment, just staring at Mattie. Mattie knows, but he just doesn't want to understand. "Their charters were revoked."

Mattie looked down at his lap, scared and almost like he was mourning people he had never met. "So it's just you."

In the part of his mind where he felt the land that he was, Alfred nudged the border of Maryland and Pennsylvania and felt the gaping emptiness like every other time he has reached out to the North before. "Yeah, it's just me."

* * *

 **March 10, 1778** Baron von Stueben's Quarters outside of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, United States

* * *

It's late. Or rather really early.

And they are still celebrating with von Stueben.

Alfred sits by himself in a corner of the room, feeling the ache of training both intensify and relax away in the warm room. And it has to be warm. Half of his men aren't wearing pants as they dine with the Baron and his aides. Alfred has managed to not be the center of attention tonight, his pair of torn breeches just modest enough not to make him burst into a burning blush, and is nursing a drink as he stares out at the cold winter moon rising through the nearest window.

He hears the grating laugh before Beilschmidt appears in his vision, dragging a chair over to join him. So much for solitude.

“Jones!” the obviously intoxicated nation shouts before dissolving into his hissing laugh, plopping his ass in the seat.

“Beilschmidt,” Alfred greets warily.

_"Enjoying the party?"_

Alfred ignores the leer. _“It’s a week too early for Saint Patrick’s festivities.”_

“Deflection!” Beilschmidt crows in a heavy German accent. _“Sam taught me that. Ablenkung is more fun to say.”_

Alfred rolls his eyes as Beilschmidt continues muttering German phrases under his breath. _“Sam didn’t tell me she was teaching you English.”_

Beilschmidt waves a hand distractedly. _“It’s more so I can insult Arthur when I see him on the battlefield. Having Nationspeak is nice and all, but I feel the insults truly hit home in their native languages."_

_“Nationspeak?”_

_“What Nations use to speak to each other. I can speak in German to Francis and he can speak in French to me, and we’ll both understand each other perfectly as though he was speaking German."_

_“Isn’t that just being fluent?”_

Beilschmidt scoffs and takes a long pull from his flagon. _“Das schmeckt wie Pisse. No. You’ll understand when you’re a nation.”_ Alfred perks up; this is the first time Beilschmidt has even remotely indicated he thought the Americans would succeed. _“Of course that’s if you live long enough.”_

Of course.

Shaking his head at his naivete, Alfred sets his jaw and turns to stare out the window again. Beilschmidt doesn’t notice his sour mood immediately and instead continues to laugh to himself. He nudges Alfred in the knee once, twice, and on the third time, he puts a little more force into it.

Alfred whips his head around to glower at the cackling nation. _“Why do you always do that?”_

_“Do wha-"_

_“The backhanded complimenting! Everything you say to me always ends with; will you actually succeed or will you fade into obscurity, dead on the ground you’re trying to save or what have you done to deserve a win."_ Beilschmidt looks startled as Alfred sets his cup of wine down a little harshly on the window sill beside them. _“Do you not think I know enough about martial law and planning to understand how truly fucked we are? I was raised by one of the best military leaders in the world, and do you know he had me write up the battle plans for the Seven Year's War. I wrote the battle plans that lead to his success, not him! I have enough information from both my congress and the General to know that we have a snowball's chance to succeed._

_“I’ve been in this fight longer than everyone in this room. Longer even than my own sisters. Sure Sam helped write our Declaration and Victoria assembled our militia in Massachusetts. But I founded the Sons of Liberty. I snuck information out of Arthur’s own house to my patriots from under his nose. I lied to his face about my sisters still living. And I smiled in the morning after he killed my people, my family._

_“I may not know how to fight as you do. Or how to drill my men. Or how to set up a camp properly. Or not to cook food with a bayonet,"_ here Alfred felt his cheeks heat up in embarrassment at the memory of Beilschmidt’s disbelief, _“but I still am fighting. And that has to count for something."_

The hall is quiet, nearby conversations having hushed under the force of his strained voice. Most of his officers understand French, but they’re all staring at him, and Alfred realizes he’s on his feet and grows hot under their stares. He hates being the center of attention deeply within his soul.

He takes a deep breath in and smoothes his jacket down. _“So stop insulting my devotion to my people and this fight. I have more to lose and more to gain than you do."_

Beilschmidt says nothing. He just stares at Alfred, his eyes a dark red, almost closer to brown in the fading candlelight. Alfred doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, but he keeps staring back at Beilschmidt, swallowing and feeling his Adam’s apple bob.

In the silence, they can all clearly hear the rushing feet heading toward them. Alfred turns to see a page from the General’s quarters appear in the doorway to the room. They lock eyes across the room and they both move to intercept each other.

Alfred doesn’t get far and the page skids to a halt in front of him, throwing up a half-hearted salute. “Major General Jones, Nurse Jones requests that you return to their quarters immediately.” 

The boy pauses after delivering that and Alfred sighs. “What else did she say?”

The boy’s salute sags. “Nurse Jones requests that you get your irresponsible, drunk, virginal ass back to General Washington’s quarters immediately before she comes after you with a hot poker.”

Alfred frowns. Victoria and Sam had agreed to let him have a few nights sleeping in the officer’s quarters. Something must be wrong. “Did she say anything else?”

“Just that it was a code Peregrine, and that she wasn’t joking about the hot poker.”

A cold feeling sweeps down to his stomach. 

* * *

He runs up the stairs to their rooms, the boy─ Sampson he had learned on their rapid horse ride back to Valley Forge─ the boy’s words echoing in his head; “well, not really a code Peregrine, as such, more like a reverse code Peregrine? She said you didn’t have a code for this one, all due respect sir.”

He opens the door, fast but quiet, he doesn’t want to deal with the fallout of waking the children if they are all asleep, to Samantha and Victoria frowning down at his cot where they arranged all of the children aside from Sylvia.

Alfred blinks. There are more children, not less. That’s not what he was expecting.

“What the fuck is this?”

Victoria blinks in surprise at him. “How drunk are you?”

Stepping fully into the room. “Not that drunk, what happened? Sampson said it was a code Peregrine.”

“The opposite, really,” Samantha says as she reaches out and rearranges the two new children. “We have two children when we were expecting one.”

What. “Come again?”

Victoria side eyes him. “Massachusetts, we think, ratified the Articles today. But when I felt it solidify, we found two babies, not one.”

“What does that mean?”

Samantha shrugs as she surveys the eight children displayed on Alfred’s cot. “We don’t know. We were waiting until you got home─”

“─But you were taking too long,” Victoria cut in nastily.

Samantha clears her throat. “Running theory is that it’s like Murigen and Urien. One for the North and one for the South.”

“And we’re sure it’s not Rhode Island.”

Victoria sends him the stink eye for that. They had learned in the letter from their Congress last month that both Rhode Island and Connecticut had ratified, so it’s looking like Victoria and Samantha respectively are remaining in their old territories. Alfred’s not bitter that he doesn’t get Virginia anymore. Nope, not at all.

“Yes,” Sam sighs. “So North and South make the most sense.”

Alfred nods and looks at the babies closer. There’s another baby he doesn’t recognize in between Thomas and Chloe. He scans how the rest of them are arranged: Morgan, Alex, Chloe, Baby 1, Thomas, Taylor, Babies 2 and 3. “Who is that?” he points to Baby 1.

“Pennsylvania; she showed up right after Taylor. We named her Paige.”

A secret part of Alfred deflates. He had wanted to find Pennsylvania and was hoping they could have used Hannah’s old name for her. “Oh. And I’m guessing that Taylor is New Hampshire, based on geography.”

Victoria laughs and bends to scoop Alex into her arms. As she deposits him in his bassinet, she says, “Yes. she’s New Hampshire. We think Sylvia is somewhere between Thomas and Taylor.”

Alfred joins in replacing babies back into their beds; Morgan coles quietly when he sets her down and he rubs her stomach lightly. “Did you settle on names for our two Massachusetts?”

Samantha doesn’t say anything, she just keeps stroking her thumb on the baby’s hairline. Victoria is also quiet where she’s rocking Chloe back to sleep before setting her down again.

“I know you both don’t agree with not using the old names,” Samantha says. Alfred turns back to the bed and the floorboard creak under his foot. “And now that we have code Peregrine for if they’re in danger─ I just, it feels wrong to erase them like that.”

It’s silent for a moment. “So.. what did you name them?”

Samantha looks up at him and then back to the two babies. “Owen and Sarah. We’re not sure who is North and who is South yet.”

Alfred nods, accepting the names. Victoria still has her back to the two of them and he resigns himself to never really understanding their grief like they never will understand his.

* * *

 **March 11, 1778** Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, United States

* * *

Beilschmidt is staring at him when he looks up from where he had collapsed on the ground again. He looks appraising and Alfred immediately pushes himself up to sitting. When he sees he has Alfred’s full attention, he reaches into his pocket and pulls something out.

He throws it at Alfred’s chest and Alfred catches it more out of reflex than anything else. It’s a walnut. Alfred looks back up at Beilschmidt.

 _“I was pushing you to see what you were made of,"_ he says. _“If you don’t believe in yourself, you’ll never succeed in anything. I just wanted you to prove to yourself that you know you will win this.”_ He nods to the walnut. _“You have to exert a little pressure to get the reward."_

Quiet, Alfred looks down at the walnut and then back up at Beilschmidt. He smiles tightly, a small private smile, before snapping to attention. _"Again."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2.26.1778:: flashback to 1766, Sons of Liberty is established; Alfred is writing to his contacts throughout the colonies. Three years previous, New France was surrendered to England after the Seven Year's War and renamed the Province of Quebec. In 1791, it will become known as Canada.
> 
> 2.26.1778:: Morgan was used as a boy's name until the 1980s. In this version of history, the British isles are named from Arthurian legend;  
> England:: Arthur, King Arthur  
> Wales:: Myrddin, a Welsh name for Merlin and a wizard/enchanter in Arthurian Legend  
> Scotland:: Tristan, a variant of the Pictish name Drustan and a Knight of the Round Table  
> Ireland:: Urien, Knight of the Round Table  
> Northern Ireland:: Murigen, a variant of Morgaine/Morgana and a powerful enchantress/witch/fay in Arthurian Legend
> 
> 3.4.1778:: Memory from 1690, attending a Candlemas Ball. A recent rebellion in Maryland (Katherine) will result in the dissolution of her proprietary charter in two years. Nathanael Bacon Sr. and his family were all alive during this period and the Burwell's, specifically, were regarded as Virginia's semi-royal family. If you're interested, there were a lot of rules regarding dancing, but the highest-ranking man and woman would dance the minuets and then the "country dances" would follow. Dancing was a big part of life in Virginia so I feel it's very important to Alfred.
> 
> 3.4.1778:: Flashback to 1770, Alfred has just found out about the Boston Massacre (it is several months after the fact since he has a print of the engraving by Paul Revere.
> 
> 3.10.1778:: Samantha references a naming tradition where if a child dies as an infant or a child, the next child born of that same-sex will receive the same name.
> 
> GERMAN translations (as best a non-native speaker can determine from various translation tools):  
> Wir haben genug Zeit, um eine Pause zu machen:: We have enough time to take a break.  
> Nun, das ist eine Art, es zu tun:: Well, that's one way to do it.  
> Das schmeckt wie Pisse:: This tastes like piss.
> 
> FRENCH translations (as best a non-native speaker can determine from various translation tools):  
> Tapent, tapent, petites mains/Tourne, tourne, joli moulin/Nage, nage:: clap clap, little hands/turn turn pretty mill/ swim swim- [French version of Patty-cake]

**Author's Note:**

> Updates are every three weeks (ish)
> 
> Also, a little disclaimer, the general political climate in the USA is fucked and I hate nazis and trump supporters. This is a work of fiction, not intended to be a piece of propaganda for this stupid fucking country. I think it's an interesting concept and I wanted to explore HISTORICAL events that are largely aggrandized. This piece is going to touch on racism/sexism/native-phobia that was present during the revolutionary war and the period after it.
> 
> Other than that, enjoy. Wash your hands and vote (not on the piece, in your local elections/primaries).


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